Mercedes admitted they missed a clear opportunity to win the Singapore Grand Prix after failing to pit Lewis Hamilton early enough.
Advert | Become a Supporter & go ad-free
Hamilton was running second when the two drivers directly behind him, Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen, made their first stops. Their pit calls allowed them to undercut Hamilton and move ahead, denying him the chance to use the same tactic to challenge race leader Charles Leclerc.
After the race Hamilton said they could have won “easily” if they had pitted at that moment. The team’s trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, accepted the team had let the chance slip.
“We missed an open goal today by not taking the undercut on lap 19,” Shovlin said. “We had discussed it but didn’t react quickly enough to how fast Charles’ tyres were degrading. We decided to call Valtteri [Bottas] to do the opposite to Verstappen on the lap that mattered.
“Obviously we should have made that call for Lewis, and timed it late enough that others could not respond. That was our opportunity to win and it’s frustrating when you let something like that slip through your fingers.”
Mercedes brought Bottas in primarily to protect him from the car behind. “We boxed Valtteri first to avoid losing a place to Albon, which was why we asked him to maintain a gap; otherwise it would have forced Lewis in.”
Having missed the window to pit Hamilton early, Mercedes instead kept him out longer. “With Lewis we tried to stay out to maximise the tyre offset to the leading pack and see if we could get a Safety Car. We had lost the position to Vettel, but we consciously sacrificed track position to Verstappen to back that gamble.
“The sequence of Safety Cars at the end didn’t help our cause, but in the end it probably didn’t change the result significantly.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter andgo ad-free
2019 F1 season
- Crying in the Melbourne car park at 2019 grand prix was my career low – Ocon
- McLaren Racing reports reduced £71 million loss in 2019
- Kvyat: Hockenheim podium last year was “my biggest achievement” so far
- How the FIA’s new encrypted fuel flow meter targets Ferrari’s suspected ‘aliasing’ trick
- “He smashed my office door”: 23 must-see moments from ‘Drive to Survive’ season two
Browse all 2019 F1 season articles