Mercedes technical director James Allison revealed that a one-stop was their plan for Lewis Hamilton at the Dutch Grand Prix, but a lock-up forced them down an unplanned route.
Hamilton went into the Dutch GP with major momentum having won two of the last three races, claiming victory at Silverstone and Spa, but the Dutch GP at Zandvoort brought about a nasty surprise on qualifying day as Hamilton suffered a shock Q2 elimination. To make matters worse, he also picked up a three-place grid drop for impeding Sergio Perez.
Starting the race on the soft tyre, Hamilton was able to make strong early progress into the top 10 before pitting for the hard tyre on Lap 24. Hamilton was in again on Lap 49 for another set of softs, though Allison has revealed that this second stop was not part of the plan.
Instead, Hamilton was due to go to the end on those hard tyres, but a lock-up would damage them and necessitated that extra pit stop, a strategy which was not competitive compared to what they originally had planned.
Hamilton pitted and returned to the race P8, the position where he would finish, one spot behind team-mate George Russell.
Asked as part of Mercedes’ Dutch GP debrief whether a soft/medium/soft strategy would have been better for Hamilton than hards for that middle stint, Allison replied: “Possibly, although the hard looked like an okay tyre, probably the best tyre that race.
“And the real question is, would a one-stop have been better than a two-stop? And if you’re going to do a one-stop, then starting where Lewis started, soft was an okay choice for the first stint because we managed to make a few places there. And then it’s hard to the finish.
“That was the strategic choice. And hard was definitely the right tyre to pick to go from there to the end of the race. However, we had to abandon that strategy to go to soft/hard/soft because Lewis had a lock-up which then damaged the tyre, which then took away the pace of the car.
“And then we’re on a recovery strategy at that point, having to make it into a two-stop. And soft was our best option for completing the race.
“But soft/hard/soft, soft/medium/soft, neither is competitive compared with soft/hard, which was our intended strategy. And the second stop was only really a function of trying to recover from that lock-up, because the pace he had on the hard tyre prior to the lock-up was very competitive.
“Once he got himself free of all those back markers, the car was running quite well and he would have been doing good.”
Hamilton and Mercedes will look to bounce back this weekend at Monza, a venue where Hamilton holds the joint-record for most wins alongside Michael Schumacher with five.
