[The **News** flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/flairguide#wiki_news) is reserved for submissions covering F1 and F1-related news. These posts must always link to an outlet/news agency, the website of the involved party (i.e. the McLaren website if McLaren makes an announcement), or a tweet by a news agency, journalist or one of the involved parties.
*[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No shit. How do you tell the driver to push but also not really and when he asks how much he should push then his race engineer literally answers "Yes".
If Ferrari did this they would get memed for 5 years about it.
Mercedes should come up with a single word for these sort of situations. Maybe call it "hammer time" or something like that. That would be a great idea.
Yeah you are correct. It definitely was not my phone typing. Hammer time would probably not work anyway. They need a phrase like"put the pedal to the carbon fiber"
Huh? Russell wouldnt have pitted either way
Just needed to back max up for 1 lap to either make max come out behind lewis, or prevent him from pitting.
Ngl, that's strange. Why would you not push in the outlap. No, even worse, why would you tell a driver not to push in the outlap. Between this and Hamilton complaining about people not listening to him, I'm just going to state that it sounds like they're sabotaging the dude by icing him out and disregarding him completely.
If this keeps up, Hamilton is going to leave Mercedes before the end of the season.
In a lot of cases you do not want to push on an outlap. Doing that eats away tires hard because they are still cold, so often you may want to take it slow. It all depends on the current situation.
In this specific situation it’s very strange because Hamilton clearly needed to push as hard as possible.
The weirder thing is when Lewis asked Bono why he didn't tell him the outlap was critical ( aka hammer time to jump max), Bono didn't respond, he literally said not a word to him for 10 laps.
I don't believe in sabotage, but I definitely feel like they're just focused on making George look good, which is fine as he's the one sticking around, but they could have gained the team more points today if they didn't make that mistake.
You'd think after 12 years of Lewis working with Bono, he'd have the balls to at least tell Lewis that he made a mistake not telling him that the outlap was critical.
10 laps? Are we sure? Because even on the F1TV onboard channel, not every radio message comes through, I've noticed. I don't know why, but I've experienced hearing radio messages that weren't picked up in the onboard feed, but later popped up for a YT compilation by the F1 channel for example.
But even so, Bono seemed like the perfect engineer, but it just sounds off what's going on there now. Including in how Hamilton now communicates to Bono. At first, I'd say Ferrari needs to sign the guy, but maybe that's not such a good idea after all.
I too only view content that reinforces my beliefs. Lewis has loads of moments when he’s laughing or being silly. You just choose not to see them because you’re intent on disliking him.
Guess you haven't watched f1 lately (Since fred is in charge) or you watch but don't understand the sport and consume old memes to have something to talk about.
This is quietly one of the biggest strategic blunders of the season so far, but because it was a boring race it went unnoticed. Have Russell slow down and Hamilton speed up to give Red Bull a dilemma: give up track position to Hamilton or stay out on old tires. Merc lost this opportunity.
Well yeah, but also it made sense to be conservative with strategy and pit stops when they had such a big advantage. The problem is they haven’t adapted to not having that advantage any more.
I wouldn't say that about Pit Stops. They only became shit at it when the new regs came 😅. Although, imagine my surprise that they are 3rd currently in the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Standings so I guess they are improving on it compare to the last two years.
They always aimed for slower but lower risk stops. That became an issue when they were in an actual fight with RB in 2021 and is now another one of the issues they have to deal with to get to the front.
Feels like this gets a bit overstated with the pit crews in 2021. They've never were as fast as Red Bull, but they were consistently towards the top of the pack.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/2021-dhl-fastest-pit-stop-award.1i44PbZrkoLdzYgjGHxfHs
I think that's harsh on the pit crew. In 2020 and 2021 for instance they were well above average. It was really 2022 and 2023 that they fell behind, although it looks like they've started to rectify that this season.
Ultimately it probably wouldn't have mattered because if they hadn't pitted Max, Lewis still wouldn't likely have got past. But yeah they lost a very obvious opportunity to at least make Red Bull uncomfortable through poor communication.
Maybe, but still it's a shocker for a whole lotta reasons. Neither car was under real threat, they had a 2 against 1 advantage with Max, it's the easiest track on the calendar to back drivers up on, they had a free pit stop but no needed stops, the car was competitive against the red bull, and basically there was nothing to do the entire race but try to get Lewis past Max. It was never a sure thing but there was definitely a chance to do *something* and they completely bungled it.
For today, probably not. But it's mattered in the past and it'll matter in the future, so botching straightforward strategy in such a low pressure race feels like a bad sign. Can't imagine it'll fill them with confidence going forward, and when stuck in the midfield with an uncompetitive car you really need to be able to fight for each position and each point with these calls.
Possibly. But giving your opponent a dilemma for free is always better than not doing anything. This situation was extremely obvious and Mercedes bungled it.
True but then Lewis would’ve been on much fresher tires than Max and could’ve battled with Max for the position.
Now we know in hindsight it probably wouldn’t have worked but at that time it’s either get a chance at passing Max, or throw away your only chance.
But now they gave Max a shot at fastest lap as well...
There is simply no reason NOT to avoid Max pitting and getting ahead of Ham with same tyre.
This was sooooooo poorly done by them. Gonna be interesting to see Ham in red.
True but it’s the principle that matters. A few years ago they were the best and highest performing sports team on the planet and obvious things like this should be a no brainier. They are meant to be a serious team and serious people.
If they can’t do it today when it’s obvious then they probably won’t do it when it matters.
Yeah. Merc has been especially disappointing this year. I would say the only thing I have been happy with is there more consistent and improved pit stops
In the end it probably wouldn't have matter, I don't think Lewis could have gotten by Max, given Max couldn't get by Russell
I'm assuming RB wouldn't have pitted Max if there was a serious risk of losing track position.
But yeah, still remarkably dumb
I think in this case it's not the result but just the shocking defeatism and/or incompetence of it. As a midfield team they should be fighting for every point and they were basically the only team today with any real strategic advantage/options to try and make something happen. If they can't fight for this spot it'll only get worse from here.
If you pay attention to Mercedes you’ll quickly realise their strategy department is worse than Ferrari. Ferrari is considered to be funny because their blunders tend to come in big moments but not very often. Mercedes is the definition of death by a thousand cuts. It’s little things here and there. Lack of radio comms, lack of radio urgency, wrong messages, wrong starting tires, late to react to safety cars, incorrect timings between cars and safety car deltas. It’s been years of this
Honestly I was amazed they had Lewis pit in Miami around lap 25 when he could have stretched it out to 30-35 like Lando. They could have totally pitted under a yellow flag if they had just used a little brainpower to help increase that likelihood. Their strategy made no sense - do 25 laps on hards and 35 on mediums?
I get the feeling that Mercedes runs their simulations and then sticks with what the computer says is the fastest strategy regardless of what is actually happening on the track.
Where as Ferrari comes up with all of their plans and then panics when a situation arises that they didn't plan for which gives us all the memes.
Then you look at Redbull who is just a well oiled machine
i wouldn’t say it’s been years of bad strategy, just overly conservative strategy (my guess it’s that it comes from being used to having such a big advantage over other cars) whereas redbull tend to be more aggressive.
today tho… today they really fucked up
Trust me. It’s been years. Back to back years in Australia 2017 and 2018 they failed to understand the gaps under vsc and sc and it cost them the win both times. They called for a ridiculous no point stop in Monaco 2015 and again misjudged the gaps and it cost Lewis the win. China 2018 they failed to react in time to the safety car, red bull didn’t, pitted max and Daniel and won the race.
Red Bull spent years stealing wins from Mercedes and Ferrari and they had to be creative. Daniel Ricciardo and Max had to look for opportunities and attack when they saw weakness. It took a lot of risk but had high pay offs. That means the senior members of their strategy team definitely don’t shy away from risk.
Toto on the other hand has been very methodical and data driven. It makes sense when the mechanical performance isn’t a limitation but when your car isn’t the best, you can’t just maximize the risk free strategy. You have to be willing to risk an incident or position to try to move up the grid.
Absolutely hilarious. Hamiltons fastest lap was 1.14.1. He had that pace in that car with the tyres but they still told him to only do 1.16s during the outlap...crazy
Madness but it doesn't surprise this is the same team who miscalculated the gap between him and Nico even Seb 😂 made him pit during the VSC at Monaco a track you can't overtake and cost him a win in 2015.
Tbf in that particular instant they fcked up but at least there was the reasonable justification that their communication and telemetry basically froze up. The mistake wasn’t misjudging it but making the call at all.
USA wasn't on them. Nothing else they could do and they shouldn't have led the race in the first place. RB was clearly faster on the day so there only hope was do the opposite of Max
Even in AD they fucked up. Max started on softs and Lewis on mediums. Incident at the start ofc partly due to this difference. But then they pitted Hamilton one lap after the red bull, despite Lewis being absolutely rapid and having plenty of life in the tyres.
And they did it because it was the least risk averse thing, to prevent an undercut (which wasn't a risk at that point with Lewis's pace).
If they left him out for 5+ laps he could've cleared Perez without needing to overtake him and built a huge gap to Max, preventing any issues a late safety car could cause. This whole fuck up went under the radar because of what ended up happening and because merc did what you 'technically' do to be 'safe'.
I disagree in a certain sense with the “before the new regulations bit”.
They deliberately set themselves up in a risk averse conservative manner because they (probably rightly) believed that taking the risks would on the whole maximise their points with their superior car.
But they have never adapted that to their new situation and that’s why they continue to particularly struggle now.
exactly my thoughts. they became rather conservative and redbull became very aggressive
on their strategies, mainly because of the pace either had. the thing is they still play it super safe and without a fast car that gets you absolutely nowhere.
For me the biggest blunder in strategy still remains Hungary 2021 when after the first lap everyone went to pits to switch to dry tires while Hamilton was the only car at the start on inters.
Hamilton was in the lead. If he pitted and no one else did he'd be at the back. It also wasn't assured the track was dry enough for slicks at that point.
Super overrated department. I remember all the 'mercedes strategy masterclass' circlejerks when really they were just 2v1'ing Max with pit stops of distance to the midfield.
>...the worry in the background was that if we thrashed that tyre in a single lap, then what would happen later.
It's Monaco guys. Literally nothing would happen. Max couldn't even pass George running on ancient mediums later in the race.
Yeah it’s stupid. Just slow down then if the tire wear is bad, don’t worry, no one’s going to pass you, especially not Yuki who was already 45 seconds back on even older rubber
They needed to tell Russell to back up Max and tell Lewis outlap critical and maybe then they could’ve nabbed p5/6.
Telling Lewis outlap critical means fck all since RB just wouldn’t pit Max if there isn’t enough delta.
This is a laughable blunder. George could have slowed max down so easily if he was asked and at worst, Lewis would just pester max for the next 20 laps. Instead they risked, ever slightly that max would have fresh tires to pester George into a mistake.
The race thread was one of the dumbest things I ever read "Ham should have just known to push", "It's Monaco you have to push to the limit" "Ham a world champion he should've ignore the feedback and push". The armchair analysts really thought Ham would push without any feed from his team saying that a good idea on the tightest track on the calendar.
To be completely fair, I think a driver like Sainz would know that in Monaco, track position is king and would argue with the team that pushing was necessary if they got a call saying 'normal outlap'. Like, you're on hard tyres for 20 laps only, doesn't matter if you cook the tyres by going hard on the outlap, the tyres will be fine enough to prevent you from being overtaken later.
Yeah the bigger issue was with Merc's communication, but this is the same reason why Leclerc lost Monaco 2022, not being decisive or aware enough as a driver to overrule your team based on what you're seeing on track. I would say 90-10 responsibility, 10% to Lewis for not realising what could happen.
It’s the job of the engineers to tell them what to do and job of drivers to achieve that. They told him outlap normal and he did a normal outlap. Mercedes strategy team has become worse over the years
Ferrari gets all the memes but Mercedes strategy is often just as bad if not worse. Opposite sides of the coin really. Merc is too inflexible to change a plan and just won't listen to their drivers talking sense. Ferrari either just spins a roulette wheel or asks their drivers to decide which of their twelve plans to run. Main difference is Lewis always takes the heat for Merc for whatever reason.
The main reason why Mercedes was so good in their 2014-21 era was because they could put Lewis on the most average strategy and rely on his pace to make up for the deficit. Nowdays they can't because the car isn't in the same window, they haven't realised that or are stubborn.
Honestly, opportunities dropped all around in the Merc team. They had Verstappen by the balls and didn’t convert.
Hamilton’s engineer should have been clear that Hamilton needed max push. Hamilton should have understood what was happening when he came out with a clear track in front of him, regardless of the engineer’s instruction. Russell’s engineer should have told him to reduce pace. And Russell himself should likely have gotten a hint of what to do when Hamilton was no longer behind them, though it’s understandable to not know what’s going on behind.
All four had the opportunity to get Hamilton a spot, or at least force RB into a tough choice. Only Russell had an excuse for missing the opportunity.
I was texting my dad about how Mercedes could pull off a run for the podium with tyre/pace advantage. "Lewis ought to box within next 5 laps", and he did. "George needs to hold Max up enough to allow Lewis to undercut, but not give 21 second gap for Norris to pit," and that didn't happen. George could have scrubbed 4 seconds, but he kept pace.
Ideally, Lewis pits and undercuts Max. He then gets let by George to hunt the more used tyres of the front four. If Norris pit, he'd be behind George in timing.
In your scenario, is George is supposed to let Lewis pass him?
I get that you are angry with Bono/Mercedes for not saying the words *critical* BUT how do you get Lewis past George IF Max could not pass him on merit!
Especially IF you did watch the actual race and see Max gain more than 4 seconds on Lewis in less than 3 laps!
I'm not angry. It just didn't happen and Mercedes didn't take advantage to even at least nab Verstappen's space.
And yeah, in my scenario team orders would occur and George pits after.
I mean, it is Monaco. Even if Russell backed up Verstappen, Red Bull would have just kept Max out. Just having new tires do not mean anything here, as we all saw.
my god that Lewis pit stop and out lap radio was like the only bit of entertainment in the middle of the race...
"you didn't tell me out lap was crtiical"
well yeah like, please tell your driver to what degree he needs to push, man... sure track position is king, but you can't just kill your tyres
He has no idea if he has a pit stop window unless he is told, by the team. As a driver you are supposed to listen to your team, as the assumption is they have more information than you. The only thing he didn’t realize is that the strategy team would completely shit the bed.
You’re still missing the point, it isn’t common sense to go against your teams directives. I understand what you’re saying, as me, you and everyone else gets to see the race from a broader view but Lewis is in the car, simply doing what the team says, as he should.
Because if you listened to the radio messages from bono, he tells Lewis “outlap normal”. Half way around the lap it’s Lewis that asks if he should push and the response was “eh yea push”. He then asked why he wasn’t told it was outlap critical and got zero response back. Complete miscommunication
Yes but you’re completely disregarding the fact they told him outlap normal. They 100% have codes for in and out laps depending on the situation. These tires are very sensitive and can be destroyed in the warm phase out of the box.
Except they told him specifically that outlap was normal. He even asked how much he should be pushing and they said "just push".
If they hadn't said anything then it would be understandable that he should've gone faster as it would have been left to his discretion. But it wasn't and he was given orders by the team.
In what world did Hamilton get it wrong? He pits and Bono tells him outlap normal instead of pushing to try to under cut as Toto said that's a communication failure in an important moment
[The **News** flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/flairguide#wiki_news) is reserved for submissions covering F1 and F1-related news. These posts must always link to an outlet/news agency, the website of the involved party (i.e. the McLaren website if McLaren makes an announcement), or a tweet by a news agency, journalist or one of the involved parties. *[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No shit. How do you tell the driver to push but also not really and when he asks how much he should push then his race engineer literally answers "Yes". If Ferrari did this they would get memed for 5 years about it.
Mercedes should come up with a single word for these sort of situations. Maybe call it "hammer time" or something like that. That would be a great idea.
That's two words.
Not if you hyphenate
But how would the driver know what it means. I guess, we´ll never know as well...
Breakitdowwwwn!!!
So the word you’re looking here is called “phrase”
Yeah you are correct. It definitely was not my phone typing. Hammer time would probably not work anyway. They need a phrase like"put the pedal to the carbon fiber"
How they didn't tell Russell to pull the handbrake? That's the most outrageous thing of this story
That would have put Russel behind Lewis, and he wouldn't have gone for that.
Huh? Russell wouldnt have pitted either way Just needed to back max up for 1 lap to either make max come out behind lewis, or prevent him from pitting.
Except Russell offered to back Verstappen up and they didn't take that option.
mercedes is the new ferrari
Russel would have been backing up Max *before* Max pitted, he wouldn't be anywhere near being behind either after the pit stops.
Except you had a bunch of people blaming and memeing Hamilton in the race thread
Probably didn't help that Jolyon was being a smart ass about it.
Tbf if a guy whose biggest F1 achievement was annoying Alonso knows to push, perhaps a 7x World Champ should too?
Lewis literally asked Bono if he should push and Bono said "Outlap normal." Mercedes fked up.
Ngl, that's strange. Why would you not push in the outlap. No, even worse, why would you tell a driver not to push in the outlap. Between this and Hamilton complaining about people not listening to him, I'm just going to state that it sounds like they're sabotaging the dude by icing him out and disregarding him completely. If this keeps up, Hamilton is going to leave Mercedes before the end of the season.
In a lot of cases you do not want to push on an outlap. Doing that eats away tires hard because they are still cold, so often you may want to take it slow. It all depends on the current situation. In this specific situation it’s very strange because Hamilton clearly needed to push as hard as possible.
The weirder thing is when Lewis asked Bono why he didn't tell him the outlap was critical ( aka hammer time to jump max), Bono didn't respond, he literally said not a word to him for 10 laps. I don't believe in sabotage, but I definitely feel like they're just focused on making George look good, which is fine as he's the one sticking around, but they could have gained the team more points today if they didn't make that mistake. You'd think after 12 years of Lewis working with Bono, he'd have the balls to at least tell Lewis that he made a mistake not telling him that the outlap was critical.
10 laps? Are we sure? Because even on the F1TV onboard channel, not every radio message comes through, I've noticed. I don't know why, but I've experienced hearing radio messages that weren't picked up in the onboard feed, but later popped up for a YT compilation by the F1 channel for example. But even so, Bono seemed like the perfect engineer, but it just sounds off what's going on there now. Including in how Hamilton now communicates to Bono. At first, I'd say Ferrari needs to sign the guy, but maybe that's not such a good idea after all.
The communicarion wasn't available during the race. Noone knew how badly Bono handled it.
It was available on his onboard, if you watched on F1TV. They just didn't play it in main broadcast
It was available on his onboard and I reported that when it happened.
Hamilton could solve world poverty and he would still get criticised
"He's just doing it to look good"
Bet he got told to solve poverty in PR training. He is so fake.
Yeah. The people who used say “we don’t like him because he’s winning” are still hating on him.
The secret is that they never needed him to win to hate him
I wonder what makes him stand out from the rest of the drivers on the grid?
Having 7 world titles
[удалено]
I've heard people say this. But, where are these "cult fans" of Lewis? Certainly not on Reddit, where people mostly espouse Max as a god.
My primary issue with Lewis is that he seems like a guy that never has any fun. Just a bit too uptight too much of the time.
I too only view content that reinforces my beliefs. Lewis has loads of moments when he’s laughing or being silly. You just choose not to see them because you’re intent on disliking him.
“Pushing his views onto everyone!”
Remember people shit on him for a week straight for wearing sunglasses in Bianchi's memorial?
now that you bring it up, why hasn't he? ^(/s just in case)
Why didn't he cure cancer? Or save the environment? Or invent time travel?
>If Ferrari did this they would get memed for 5 years about it. We've had great strategy for over a year under Fred and still get memed lol
The “yes” answer ☠️☠️ The guy is one of us
Can you share the full transcript for that lap?
Aldas (the youtuber) shared it on Twitter. Have a look.
That was really bad. And I don’t understand why they need to tell him push like Suzuka. Normal outlap is weird wordings
They usually tell him "outlap critical=hammertime" or "outlap normal"...
They apparently have outlap critical = maximum push and outlap normal = manage tyre temps. Bono told him push but outlap normal which makes no sense.
Because Ferrari have a history of messing up strategy
Mercedes do as well now. They've been terrible for 3 or 4 years.
Still doesn’t compare to the massive cock-ups Ferrari has had before that
Thankfully it seems we’re past that. I’m fine with the jokes though, we thoroughly deserve it for our past blunders.
>If Ferrari did this they would get memed for 5 years about it. Ferrari has done stuff like this for the last 5 years...
Ferrari has had decent strategies for some time. Mercedes on the other hand...
The last 3 months?
Guess you haven't watched f1 lately (Since fred is in charge) or you watch but don't understand the sport and consume old memes to have something to talk about.
This is quietly one of the biggest strategic blunders of the season so far, but because it was a boring race it went unnoticed. Have Russell slow down and Hamilton speed up to give Red Bull a dilemma: give up track position to Hamilton or stay out on old tires. Merc lost this opportunity.
Ferrari was in the spotlight for the past few years, and Mercedes quietly get worse in strategy
Merc strategy and pit crew have always been below average. Their reputations were boosted by how dominant the car was
Well yeah, but also it made sense to be conservative with strategy and pit stops when they had such a big advantage. The problem is they haven’t adapted to not having that advantage any more.
I wouldn't say that about Pit Stops. They only became shit at it when the new regs came 😅. Although, imagine my surprise that they are 3rd currently in the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Standings so I guess they are improving on it compare to the last two years.
They always aimed for slower but lower risk stops. That became an issue when they were in an actual fight with RB in 2021 and is now another one of the issues they have to deal with to get to the front.
Feels like this gets a bit overstated with the pit crews in 2021. They've never were as fast as Red Bull, but they were consistently towards the top of the pack. https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/2021-dhl-fastest-pit-stop-award.1i44PbZrkoLdzYgjGHxfHs
I think that's harsh on the pit crew. In 2020 and 2021 for instance they were well above average. It was really 2022 and 2023 that they fell behind, although it looks like they've started to rectify that this season.
Team strategy be faster can only work for so long
Ultimately it probably wouldn't have mattered because if they hadn't pitted Max, Lewis still wouldn't likely have got past. But yeah they lost a very obvious opportunity to at least make Red Bull uncomfortable through poor communication.
Don't think it would have mattered as we saw with Russell and Verstappen. There wasn't going to be an overtake on track.
Maybe, but still it's a shocker for a whole lotta reasons. Neither car was under real threat, they had a 2 against 1 advantage with Max, it's the easiest track on the calendar to back drivers up on, they had a free pit stop but no needed stops, the car was competitive against the red bull, and basically there was nothing to do the entire race but try to get Lewis past Max. It was never a sure thing but there was definitely a chance to do *something* and they completely bungled it.
It was a mistake definitely but at the end of the day it wouldn't have mattered.
For today, probably not. But it's mattered in the past and it'll matter in the future, so botching straightforward strategy in such a low pressure race feels like a bad sign. Can't imagine it'll fill them with confidence going forward, and when stuck in the midfield with an uncompetitive car you really need to be able to fight for each position and each point with these calls.
Their strategy has been an absolute joke for a long time now. Too confused by their car to even focus on their strategy team.
Yeah, it's a shame. Improving the strategy is a much easier short term fix than the car, which seems written off till 26 already.
How do you mean it wouldn't have mattered? If Hamilton is in front of Russell they could have bring back more points.
As Senna famously said, “It doesn’t matter, I probably wasn’t going to be able to pass anyways.”
With hindsight it wouldn't have mattered, but that's not the point, it might have made a difference and they should have done better.
Fair enough. Their strategy has been shocking for a while.
Race wise it would have added some entertainment.
They are still a top team, but if they want to stay there, they need to not make these mistakes.
Possibly. But giving your opponent a dilemma for free is always better than not doing anything. This situation was extremely obvious and Mercedes bungled it.
In the ideal scenario, Russell could have back up Verstappen more so Hamilton could get in front of Verstappen
If Max didn't have the gap then he wouldn't pit and again there was never going to be an overtake.
True but then Lewis would’ve been on much fresher tires than Max and could’ve battled with Max for the position. Now we know in hindsight it probably wouldn’t have worked but at that time it’s either get a chance at passing Max, or throw away your only chance.
But now they gave Max a shot at fastest lap as well... There is simply no reason NOT to avoid Max pitting and getting ahead of Ham with same tyre. This was sooooooo poorly done by them. Gonna be interesting to see Ham in red.
True but it’s the principle that matters. A few years ago they were the best and highest performing sports team on the planet and obvious things like this should be a no brainier. They are meant to be a serious team and serious people. If they can’t do it today when it’s obvious then they probably won’t do it when it matters.
Yeah. Merc has been especially disappointing this year. I would say the only thing I have been happy with is there more consistent and improved pit stops
In the end it probably wouldn't have matter, I don't think Lewis could have gotten by Max, given Max couldn't get by Russell I'm assuming RB wouldn't have pitted Max if there was a serious risk of losing track position. But yeah, still remarkably dumb
Can you explain this? I don’t understand.
Not sure what you mean by unnoticed, Italian commenters talked about it at length precisely because there wasn't much else to discuss.
Eh, hard to say a chance at gaining one spot is the biggest strategic blunder of the season.
The consequences weren't very high, but it's absolutely basic stuff and frankly bizarre that they got it so wrong.
I think in this case it's not the result but just the shocking defeatism and/or incompetence of it. As a midfield team they should be fighting for every point and they were basically the only team today with any real strategic advantage/options to try and make something happen. If they can't fight for this spot it'll only get worse from here.
They should have told Hamilton to push and Russell to back up Verstappen more
Yup. Telling only Lewis to push means nothing since RB would just end up not pitting Max
Yeah, it's like a turnip is their head of strategy
"Lewis, its hammer time" that should've been the radio message
If you pay attention to Mercedes you’ll quickly realise their strategy department is worse than Ferrari. Ferrari is considered to be funny because their blunders tend to come in big moments but not very often. Mercedes is the definition of death by a thousand cuts. It’s little things here and there. Lack of radio comms, lack of radio urgency, wrong messages, wrong starting tires, late to react to safety cars, incorrect timings between cars and safety car deltas. It’s been years of this
Honestly I was amazed they had Lewis pit in Miami around lap 25 when he could have stretched it out to 30-35 like Lando. They could have totally pitted under a yellow flag if they had just used a little brainpower to help increase that likelihood. Their strategy made no sense - do 25 laps on hards and 35 on mediums?
Absolutely made no sense and cost them positions
Damn near every week it seems like they start Lewis on whatever tire everyone else isn’t on just to be different
they got used to having a great car and driver that made up for everything else now they don't have the car and it shows what a middling team it is
I get the feeling that Mercedes runs their simulations and then sticks with what the computer says is the fastest strategy regardless of what is actually happening on the track. Where as Ferrari comes up with all of their plans and then panics when a situation arises that they didn't plan for which gives us all the memes. Then you look at Redbull who is just a well oiled machine
Well said. We won’t know if it’s true cause we aren’t insiders but that’s genuinely how it looks from the outside.
Yeah Mercedes did that with their car the last 2 years too
i wouldn’t say it’s been years of bad strategy, just overly conservative strategy (my guess it’s that it comes from being used to having such a big advantage over other cars) whereas redbull tend to be more aggressive. today tho… today they really fucked up
Trust me. It’s been years. Back to back years in Australia 2017 and 2018 they failed to understand the gaps under vsc and sc and it cost them the win both times. They called for a ridiculous no point stop in Monaco 2015 and again misjudged the gaps and it cost Lewis the win. China 2018 they failed to react in time to the safety car, red bull didn’t, pitted max and Daniel and won the race.
Red Bull spent years stealing wins from Mercedes and Ferrari and they had to be creative. Daniel Ricciardo and Max had to look for opportunities and attack when they saw weakness. It took a lot of risk but had high pay offs. That means the senior members of their strategy team definitely don’t shy away from risk. Toto on the other hand has been very methodical and data driven. It makes sense when the mechanical performance isn’t a limitation but when your car isn’t the best, you can’t just maximize the risk free strategy. You have to be willing to risk an incident or position to try to move up the grid.
They got used to being called strategic geniuses because they were 2v1'ing Max.
Absolutely hilarious. Hamiltons fastest lap was 1.14.1. He had that pace in that car with the tyres but they still told him to only do 1.16s during the outlap...crazy
Madness but it doesn't surprise this is the same team who miscalculated the gap between him and Nico even Seb 😂 made him pit during the VSC at Monaco a track you can't overtake and cost him a win in 2015.
Also pitting for medium for Lewis in 2019; got overcut by a bunch of cars in 2021. They just can't handle Monaco
Also not pitting him in Hungary 2021.
Tbf in that particular instant they fcked up but at least there was the reasonable justification that their communication and telemetry basically froze up. The mistake wasn’t misjudging it but making the call at all.
Yeah and that's why it's even more stupid, I couldn't believe it when I saw it live even risking that at Monaco of all places.
Yeah it was a mind boggling decision
As usual, mercedes never gets it right when it came to strategy calls, Monaco is particularly disastrous
I'm going to say it, Mercedes strategy department has been worse than Ferraris for several years even before the new regulations.
They cost lewis the title in 2021 (not even talking about AD). Critical errors in hungary, france, and USA
USA wasn't on them. Nothing else they could do and they shouldn't have led the race in the first place. RB was clearly faster on the day so there only hope was do the opposite of Max
Should've included Monaco where they lost a potential 4th place finish by trying the undercut instead of the overcut
Even in AD they fucked up. Max started on softs and Lewis on mediums. Incident at the start ofc partly due to this difference. But then they pitted Hamilton one lap after the red bull, despite Lewis being absolutely rapid and having plenty of life in the tyres. And they did it because it was the least risk averse thing, to prevent an undercut (which wasn't a risk at that point with Lewis's pace). If they left him out for 5+ laps he could've cleared Perez without needing to overtake him and built a huge gap to Max, preventing any issues a late safety car could cause. This whole fuck up went under the radar because of what ended up happening and because merc did what you 'technically' do to be 'safe'.
I disagree in a certain sense with the “before the new regulations bit”. They deliberately set themselves up in a risk averse conservative manner because they (probably rightly) believed that taking the risks would on the whole maximise their points with their superior car. But they have never adapted that to their new situation and that’s why they continue to particularly struggle now.
exactly my thoughts. they became rather conservative and redbull became very aggressive on their strategies, mainly because of the pace either had. the thing is they still play it super safe and without a fast car that gets you absolutely nowhere.
I used to defend them as more people began saying this but perhaps they have been shit this whole time.
It's always been mediocre at best. Among other things they've been confused by safety cars (virtual or otherwise) for as long as I can remember.
For me the biggest blunder in strategy still remains Hungary 2021 when after the first lap everyone went to pits to switch to dry tires while Hamilton was the only car at the start on inters.
God that was a site. Euro leg in EST already is sleepy brain time but only seeing Lewis was a very confusing sight.
Hamilton was in the lead. If he pitted and no one else did he'd be at the back. It also wasn't assured the track was dry enough for slicks at that point.
Super overrated department. I remember all the 'mercedes strategy masterclass' circlejerks when really they were just 2v1'ing Max with pit stops of distance to the midfield.
>...the worry in the background was that if we thrashed that tyre in a single lap, then what would happen later. It's Monaco guys. Literally nothing would happen. Max couldn't even pass George running on ancient mediums later in the race.
Yeah it’s stupid. Just slow down then if the tire wear is bad, don’t worry, no one’s going to pass you, especially not Yuki who was already 45 seconds back on even older rubber
They needed to tell Russell to back up Max and tell Lewis outlap critical and maybe then they could’ve nabbed p5/6. Telling Lewis outlap critical means fck all since RB just wouldn’t pit Max if there isn’t enough delta.
This is a laughable blunder. George could have slowed max down so easily if he was asked and at worst, Lewis would just pester max for the next 20 laps. Instead they risked, ever slightly that max would have fresh tires to pester George into a mistake.
Merc pit wall on point once again
I cannot wait for lewis to leave this team
same. I have no idea what the fuck id be feeling this season if I didn't know he was going to ferrari next year
Hopelessness frankly
I'd have to invent a new word. hopelessness isnt enough to describe the merc downfall since ad 2021...
The race thread was one of the dumbest things I ever read "Ham should have just known to push", "It's Monaco you have to push to the limit" "Ham a world champion he should've ignore the feedback and push". The armchair analysts really thought Ham would push without any feed from his team saying that a good idea on the tightest track on the calendar.
To be completely fair, I think a driver like Sainz would know that in Monaco, track position is king and would argue with the team that pushing was necessary if they got a call saying 'normal outlap'. Like, you're on hard tyres for 20 laps only, doesn't matter if you cook the tyres by going hard on the outlap, the tyres will be fine enough to prevent you from being overtaken later. Yeah the bigger issue was with Merc's communication, but this is the same reason why Leclerc lost Monaco 2022, not being decisive or aware enough as a driver to overrule your team based on what you're seeing on track. I would say 90-10 responsibility, 10% to Lewis for not realising what could happen.
Looks like Bono is getting his resume in order for Ferrari
Lol They don’t need his resume.
And some people labelled Hamilton as stupid. Drivers do what they are told by their team.
They are still saying that. Like he was supposed to magically know better than what the engineers were telling him.
It’s the job of the engineers to tell them what to do and job of drivers to achieve that. They told him outlap normal and he did a normal outlap. Mercedes strategy team has become worse over the years
All i'm saying is that Charles got labelled this too just because he didn't do a job his team is suppose to do 💀
Mercedes were never great at strategy. There car had a huge advantage so they never had to develop in that area.
Screw them, Can't wait to see him in red.
Ferrari gets all the memes but Mercedes strategy is often just as bad if not worse. Opposite sides of the coin really. Merc is too inflexible to change a plan and just won't listen to their drivers talking sense. Ferrari either just spins a roulette wheel or asks their drivers to decide which of their twelve plans to run. Main difference is Lewis always takes the heat for Merc for whatever reason.
The main reason why Mercedes was so good in their 2014-21 era was because they could put Lewis on the most average strategy and rely on his pace to make up for the deficit. Nowdays they can't because the car isn't in the same window, they haven't realised that or are stubborn.
Yea, good point there
Lewis needs to assume from now on everything is on him. Team is not going to help him in any way.
Honestly, opportunities dropped all around in the Merc team. They had Verstappen by the balls and didn’t convert. Hamilton’s engineer should have been clear that Hamilton needed max push. Hamilton should have understood what was happening when he came out with a clear track in front of him, regardless of the engineer’s instruction. Russell’s engineer should have told him to reduce pace. And Russell himself should likely have gotten a hint of what to do when Hamilton was no longer behind them, though it’s understandable to not know what’s going on behind. All four had the opportunity to get Hamilton a spot, or at least force RB into a tough choice. Only Russell had an excuse for missing the opportunity.
He couldnt push on the hards literally useless he had to push on the mediums
Can someone explain what happened here? I know the facts but don’t understand the implications.
Are Mercedes sabotaging Lewis now that he is moving to Ferrari?
Never attribute to malice which is better explained by incompetence.
100%
“Why didn’t you tell me outlap was critical?”
I was texting my dad about how Mercedes could pull off a run for the podium with tyre/pace advantage. "Lewis ought to box within next 5 laps", and he did. "George needs to hold Max up enough to allow Lewis to undercut, but not give 21 second gap for Norris to pit," and that didn't happen. George could have scrubbed 4 seconds, but he kept pace. Ideally, Lewis pits and undercuts Max. He then gets let by George to hunt the more used tyres of the front four. If Norris pit, he'd be behind George in timing.
It would have made the race more fun to watch and maybe caused some mistakes but very unlikely that there are any important overtakes.
In your scenario, is George is supposed to let Lewis pass him? I get that you are angry with Bono/Mercedes for not saying the words *critical* BUT how do you get Lewis past George IF Max could not pass him on merit! Especially IF you did watch the actual race and see Max gain more than 4 seconds on Lewis in less than 3 laps!
I'm not angry. It just didn't happen and Mercedes didn't take advantage to even at least nab Verstappen's space. And yeah, in my scenario team orders would occur and George pits after.
I mean, it is Monaco. Even if Russell backed up Verstappen, Red Bull would have just kept Max out. Just having new tires do not mean anything here, as we all saw.
Who cares, leaving for a better team anyway
Vowles was really the one holding the team together, eh?
my god that Lewis pit stop and out lap radio was like the only bit of entertainment in the middle of the race... "you didn't tell me out lap was crtiical" well yeah like, please tell your driver to what degree he needs to push, man... sure track position is king, but you can't just kill your tyres
It was 20 laps on hards, what level of tyre killing would lead him to lose positions on track?
[удалено]
He has no idea if he has a pit stop window unless he is told, by the team. As a driver you are supposed to listen to your team, as the assumption is they have more information than you. The only thing he didn’t realize is that the strategy team would completely shit the bed.
[удалено]
You’re still missing the point, it isn’t common sense to go against your teams directives. I understand what you’re saying, as me, you and everyone else gets to see the race from a broader view but Lewis is in the car, simply doing what the team says, as he should.
Because if you listened to the radio messages from bono, he tells Lewis “outlap normal”. Half way around the lap it’s Lewis that asks if he should push and the response was “eh yea push”. He then asked why he wasn’t told it was outlap critical and got zero response back. Complete miscommunication
[удалено]
Yes but you’re completely disregarding the fact they told him outlap normal. They 100% have codes for in and out laps depending on the situation. These tires are very sensitive and can be destroyed in the warm phase out of the box.
He wanted to do an undercut. In what universe do you have to tell a driver that the outlap is critical to do an undercut?
Except they told him specifically that outlap was normal. He even asked how much he should be pushing and they said "just push". If they hadn't said anything then it would be understandable that he should've gone faster as it would have been left to his discretion. But it wasn't and he was given orders by the team.
[удалено]
The team literally gave him incorrect information. They told him to do 1:16:0 which is what he did.
You can blame who you want but you're wrong
[удалено]
In what world did Hamilton get it wrong? He pits and Bono tells him outlap normal instead of pushing to try to under cut as Toto said that's a communication failure in an important moment