Lewis Hamilton strategy: Mercedes reveal how they tried to force Daniel Ricciardo error
GETTY Lewis Hamilton tried in vain to jump Sebastian Vettel or Daniel Ricciardo
Hamilton dived into the pits after just 12 laps of the Monte Carlo, having failed to improve upon his third-place qualifying spot in the early laps. With overtaking notoriously difficult at Monaco, the Brit appeared to be attempting a massive undercut, where getting onto fresh tyres earlier in the race allows a driver to “jump” his competitors in the pit-stop phase. However, Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineering director for the defending F1 World Constructors’ Champions, has revealed that in fact Mercedes were struggling so much with their tyres that they were just trying to shock Red Bull into an earlier stop as it was the only way they could challenge.
“We were already seeing the signs of degradation on the hyper-soft with Valtteri and you could see that when it came in, it was pretty extreme and you lost a lot of lap time very quickly,” Shovlin said. “That’s because when you lose the front grip, the front slides more and it becomes a bit of a vicious circle. “With Lewis, there were a few factors. We knew we were going to lose a bit of time quite quickly and if we came in, went to a faster tyre and we could push, we could actually pull the leaders in.
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“When we can’t do a long stint on the hyper, we’re trying to prevent them from doing a long stint on the hyper too. “If we had stayed out with Lewis, we would just have been losing race time. “At that point, it was just a protective strategy rather than an aggressive one as you might do with an undercut.” However, it was to no avail as Ricciardo responded with the fastest lap of the race before pitting seven laps later and drove smoothly to victory despite losing two of his eight gears due to an MGU-K failure.