Lewis Hamilton says a few uncertain factors surrounding the 2020 season mean that going for a fastest lap bonus point in the Hungarian Grand Prix was a "crucial" risk.
Hamilton blitzed the field in qualifying and on race day in Hungary, asserting his authority on the championship with a second consecutive win, his eighth at the Hungaroring.
The choice for the six-time world champion to undertake a free pitstop in the closing stages of the 70-lap event and take a shot at fastest lap seemed like an unnecessary risk given his comfortable margin over second-place man Max Verstappen.
The opportunity was carefully weighed by team and driver and successful executed on the final lap of the race. Hamilton explained why the move was a "crucial" one.
"Ultimately we had to weigh up the risks," he explained. "I didn’t push so much that I was going to make a mistake and go off, so it was a fully controlled lap.
"I’ve lost the world championship in the past by one point, so I know how crucial it is to maximise in every moment.
"We’re in a year where you don’t know what reliability’s going to be like, how long the season’s going to be.
"Valtteri had a great first race, at the time he had the fastest lap, I had the gap [to Verstappen] and felt it was necessary to get that point as I felt like I earned the gap.
"Things like that extra pit stop, coming in, all those different things, do add to the risk factors. But we’re a professional team and I think as long as we continue to keep our heads on, stay focused, I felt like it was the right decision to make."
However, setting up the timing of the pit stop was a bit of a laborious affair in the Mercedes camp as team boss Toto Wolff confirmed, and one from which the team will have extracted a few lessons.
"Our communication was not great around that," Wolff admitted.
"In the morning we agreed that we wouldn't pit for a quickest lap, that it was bearing too much risk.
"The call to pit around lap 60 to protect against the safety car certainly would have been the right call, but then the gap was never quite comfortable enough. It was a second or two, then 2.5, then we hit backmarker traffic.
"Then obviously we communicated with Lewis, so at the end it was a bit of confusion, and four laps to the end he pitted to score the fastest lap.
"I think there's a lot to learn from the intercom conversation that we had in the garage, and the communication to the driver. [It was] certainly not 1A, but at the end the result counts."
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