Mercedes details failed Singapore GP strategy call for Hamilton

Mercedes technical director James Allison has explained why the Brackley squad opted to start Lewis Hamilton on the soft tyre in last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, and why the strategy failed miserably.

Mercedes purposefully chose to offset its drivers game plans at Marina Bay despite Hamilton and teammate George Russel lining up third and fourth on the grid.

Hamilton admitted to being “perplexed” by his team’s approach when informed of the strategy choice in Mercede’s pre-race briefing.

And the more the seven-time world champion thought about the plan, the more he tried to convince his strategists to keep him on the medium-to-hard run plan adopted by all of his direct rivals, including Russell.

While starting the race on Pirelli’s soft compound offered a theoretical advantage off the line and in the opening laps of the race, those benefits never materialized, leaving Hamilton angered.

“We shouldn’t have started on the softs, that was a mistake,” Allison explained in Mercedes’ debrief on its YouTube channel.

“If we could turn back time, we would do what those around us did and select the mediums.

• Read also: Hamilton ‘battled hard' to overturn Singapore strategy call

“The reasoning was that the soft tyre very often allows you to get away from the start abruptly and allows you a good chance of jumping a place or two in the opening laps of the race,” said Allison.

“And we had no real expectation before the race that we were going to suffer the sorts of difficulties that we then experienced on the soft rubber.

“We imagined we would get the upside of the soft rubber of getting a place or two. We didn’t, because that just isn’t the way the start played out.”

Adding to the miscalculation, the pace at the front of the field turned out to be quicker than Mercedes had anticipated, forcing Hamilton to pit much earlier than drivers on more durable tires, as Allison explained.

“Then we hoped that the downside of the soft being a bit more fragile wouldn’t really play out particularly badly because if you look back over the years in Singapore, on the whole, the pace starts very, very easy at the Singapore race and the drivers then build up the pace over many, many laps, leaving a soft tyre perfectly okay to run relatively deep into the pit window.

“So we didn’t get the places at the start, the pace started to build up from around about lap five.

“And that left Lewis with a car that was not particularly happy anyway, suffering from quite poor tyre degradation and needing to come in early as a consequence and really ruined his race for him. So just a clear mistake.”

One potential upside of starting on soft tyres was the opportunity to switch to mediums later in the race or capitalize on a well-timed Safety Car, a scenario Mercedes had considered.

However, with the first entirely Safety Car-free Singapore Grand Prix in years, that option never presented itself.

“It was certainly there as a great weapon,” he said. “Had there been a Safety Car at an opportune moment in the race, that would have would have been one of the upsides of that strategy.

“But once embarked upon the soft-hard strategy, we were considering changing to a two-stop for Lewis at various points during the race.

“But although that would have put him out on fresher rubber and he would have been swift on that fresher rubber. All our calculations suggested that he would not actually have gained back the pit stop loss.

“So it was there in the hutch, we could have used it, would have been good at a Safety Car. But in a normal, uninterrupted race, which for the first time in forever we got in Singapore, that tyre was not a thing that would have helped Lewis this weekend.”

The misjudged strategy left Hamilton frustrated and Mercedes without a podium in Singapore, marking a rare tactical misstep from a team renowned for its sharp decision-making.

The team will no doubt be looking to bounce back quickly as the championship continues, but this race will serve as a reminder that even the best teams are prone to getting it wrong when the margins are so fine.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter