In the last two Grands Prix, Mercedes seemed to have a chance to win despite the superior pace of the Red Bull RB18.
In Austin, a rare pitfall error allowed Lewis Hamilton to take control of the event after his final pit stop, but with hard tires against Max Verstappen’s middleweight he was unable to hold his position. The Brit therefore had no option other than the hard ones because his race tire set only had a set of mids, which had been used at the start. Mercedes explained that this stemmed from the choice made before the weekend regarding the use plan for the different sets of tires made available.
In Mexico it was the strategy adopted in the race that was questioned this time by the two Mercedes drivers, since while Red Bull started its drivers with the soft and finished with the medium, the German structure started with the medium for end up with hard tires, while it had a lot of soft tires available. He admitted after the event that he made a mistake in keeping these packs, which prompted her to adopt a much more conservative strategy that prevented Hamilton from getting close to Verstappen in the second stint.
Reacting to this after the race, Mattia Binotto believes these two examples demonstrate that Ferrari, which has been heavily criticized for strategic mistakes this season, is not the only top team that can make mistakes: “In Hungary we have been criticized, and it is normally when we do things that are not quite right that we get criticized. Mercedes may have also lost the last race for not choosing the right tires in Austin. So I think we are not the only ones. those who make different choices or who make mistakes “.
Pit stop for Charles Leclerc in Mexico City
“We saw that there wasn’t much degradation on the soft tire [à Mexico]or enough to make a single stop in the soft mids, and we did it “he added, as Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc finished fifth and sixth respectively, 58 seconds and 1 minute and 8 seconds behind the winner.
Despite correct strategy, the Scuderia had perhaps one of its worst performance weekends of the year, with its drivers simply unable to keep up with the RB18s and W13s: “In the race we had to manage our tires to make sure we survive with just one pit stop, which could be part of the reason for our slow pace. So tire management was an important thing for us. But we always think so. media was the right choice for the race “.
Leclerc considered making another stop for a while, however the Scuderia for its part felt it would give him too many cars to overtake for this to be feasible. “We saw that the one-stop strategy would be the fastest race. So our main plan was a one-stop race, soft and then medium.”
“With Charles, at one point he asked us for a ‘Plan C’, it was a solution that was just to go to two stops because he knew the tires were problematic. But he would just get back into a lot of traffic, behind seven cars, and it wouldn’t have been the right choice. So the one stop was the main plan and I think in the end it was the right plan for the race. “
