Post by BigbirdPost by M2TPost by buildPost by larkimClearly at some points in the race it would be easier or harder.
But yesterday?
Are we in a potential pit window - yes.
Can we one stop from here - yes.
Is there a VSC pitting advantage - yes.
Was there any scenario under which not pitting was a good idea
yesterday?
The only thing I could see was that Merc thought they were on the
knife edge in terms of one stop being a viable strategy based on
their tyre data.
We are often told that there are teams of strategy engineers
working back at the team HQ, surely the conditions were such that
it was a complete no-brainer (which I think they have admitted)?
If Lewis pitted the others would have split their strategy.
Considering that it's not so cut and dried. However after the event
with 20/20 hindsight Lewis was better off pitting anyway, than
staying out. Hindsight is amazingly clear.
Which cars would stay out and where would that have left them,
timewise, in relation to LH had he pitted?
I typed that slowly so your befuddle brain could understand the question.
BTW - both Ferrari & RB had pulled out tyres for 2 cars before LH got
to the pit entrance, making their intentions very clear.
...making their options clear.
Indeed.
If Ham had pitted (lap 15 of a 71 lap race) there was at least a potential
for a team to imagine that Ham needed a 2 stop race. So staying out for a
1 stop to be taken later when tyre wear would guarantee no need for a 2nd
stop was at least a possibility. Give one car that option, and one car the
VSC pitstop, split the strategy and see what worked on the day.
That was my first thought when Hamilton continued - the other teams were
stopping too soon, and therefore he'd be on a front-running 1 stop tyre
management strategy, and the others had dipped in for a banzai 2 stop tyre
strategy with the first stop getting the advantage of a short off-track time
due to it being under VSC. I was unconcerned at the time (perhaps good
reason why I'm not a F1 strategist).
As it turned out, I might have been partly right - Hamilton needed a 2
stop as did Ricciardo. For both of them, that might be attributable to
having to follow and try to pass, so knackered their tyres. But it might
also have been partly down to a stop strategy that was less than optimal
(a 1 stop on lap 15 wouldn't have been anyone's preferred split, surely?)
Maybe that's why the algorithm was slightly harder to read, though with
hindsight Merc certainly saw that the die was cast quite quickly, so perhaps
there never was any real doubt that a 1 stop approach from lap 15 should
have been doable.