Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Pirelli admits surprise at Mercedes call

Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery admits even he was surprised to see Mercedes attempt to pit Lewis Hamilton late on during the Monaco Grand Prix.

With the safety car deployed due to a crash for Max Verstappen, Hamilton opted to switch his soft tyres for a set of supersofts for the final laps of the race, with Mercedes saying it was concerned about an attack from Sebastian Vettel if he also switched to supersoft tyres.

As it transpired, both Nico Rosberg and Vettel stayed out, with the soft tyre taking a few laps to warm up again before being able to hold off Hamilton's challenge and leave him third overall. Despite dropping tyre temperatures, Hembery says he didn't see the benefit of Hamilton pitting from the lead.

“I was as surprised as everyone else to see the final pit stop that decided the outcome of the race," Hembery said. "But that shouldn’t take anything away from the great job that Lewis Hamilton did throughout the entire weekend.

"It just goes to show that it’s never over until the chequered flag falls in Formula One: a fact that Nico Rosberg clearly appreciated! The long safety car period at the end of the race obviously made maintaining tyre temperatures important at the re-start.

"In the end, we saw a spectacular finish, with the one-stop strategy that we predicted for the race used by the vast majority of competitors.”

Click here for a look at some of the best quotes from the Monaco Grand Prix weekend

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.