You can't blame making bad calls on making previous bad calls... Surely they should be on top of all this. A driver has to have absolute faith in what information he's getting. If he doesn't, then he's going to question it. That problem lies with the team. Bad call... terrible judgement, hence why team felt the need to apologize. Forget all this nonsense of how Hamilton is some kind of hinderance. If that were the case, why did he get a new contact?
It has nothing to do with a conspiracy either. It was a complete head up their arse moment. End of. Anyway... Merc are completely incapable of coming up with a strategy on the fly to sabotage anybody.
Their strategy was fine until the driver stuck his oar in. but hey, why let facts interfere with the propaganda.
Absolutely, also why let someone's irrational hatred for a person/country cloud their judgement whenever said driver(s) has an incident. Good job that's something you could never be accused of.
It's funny how a lot of people here still dont get the point. It has nothing to do with any conspiracy. Hamilton never said Hey Team, I am coming in... He said if the others are coming in he should pit him too... that is in essence what he said. That thinking was brought about after seeing the pit crew out early and thinking it was for Rosberg. I think Hamilton would know that his tyres were better than Rosberg's and possibly Vettel's at that point and I am sure he would have sense enough to know that if his tyres were losing temperature that the others behind him would also have the same problem - so he thought the others were pitting. Now Mercedes on the other hand knew they were not going to pit Rosberg, so why call on Hamilton to box? They miscalculated.. and not the distance as Toto would have us believe, they miscalculated the effects of the tyres and the ability to overtake or lack of ability to overtake on that track... In short Mercedes PANICKED! As I said before Mercedes continues to let Ferrari control and dictate their strategy. One question.. Has Mercedes made any strategic call yet for the season that pressured Ferrari or any other team to change their original strategy? Mercedes are being too reactionary, they need to start dictating race strategy...after all they are the world champions with undoubtedly the fastest car. No wonder Vettel said afterwards that Ferrari tricked Mercedes. Lauda was quite correct when he said they have too many chiefs....too many heads.
The sensible thing probably would've been to pit Rosberg, they'd have covered the possibility of Vettel pitting then. Then again if Rosberg had nabbed him at the restart all the Hamilton fans would've been furious with Mercedes so they were ****ed either way on that front. But if it was me driving I'd rather have the track position at Monaco and old tyres, so that strategy should've gone to the lead driver. I'd like to see how Hamilton's lead changed on his in lap though. A couple of years ago he dawdled back to the pits under the safety car and lost nine seconds and two positions to Vettel and Webber. Everyone was saying how unlucky he was then but it was entirely his own fault. Something similar may have happened again for Mercedes to get the maths wrong, he couldn't have been much less than a pitstop ahead before the safety car, and the pit loss is much lower at safety car speeds.
No....the sensible thing to do was not to pit any of the two of them and Vettel would have been forced to stay out. He wouldnt risk pitting and likely falling down the order. That is commonsense. And on your next point...from what I understand the safety car picked up Hamilton and the other cars that were behind were allowed to catch up to the safety car...thats what I got. It all boils down to Mercedes letting Ferrari dictate their strategy. They could have forced Vettel to stay out by letting both cars stay out... dont think that is rocket science is it?
They couldn't have forced Vettel to do anything because he was behind on track and free to do what he liked. It was perfectly reasonable for Mercedes to assume Ferrari would role the dice to try and take an unlikely win. Vettel wouldn't have fallen down the order he had because enough of a gap to pit and come out in front of Kvyat. The only reason they didn't take the free stop is because Hamilton came in.
The problem is the same as people blindly following satnavs into lakes etc Blindly trusting technology when joe bloggs sat at home could tell it wasn't going to work. It was a double whammy of total failure in common sense. Driver wants to come in because he thinks cars behind are on options.... maybe tell him they aren't? Especially when driver in P2 is on the same team and so strategy is very well known Computer thinks gap is big enough but simple live timing is enough to tell even me that it's not... maybe don't pit then? I just hope that they do learn to use common sense in future! Something intelligent people often lack.
I'm not sure of the exact gaps but from this I'd assume Vettel would have lost a few places if he pitted. He had maybe 12s on Kvyat in 4th and 16s on Ricciardo in 6th?
Hope this corrects your statement about Vettel not falling down the order if he had pitted. At Monaco teams need around 20 seconds for a pit stop in race conditions – this is the ‘pit window’ they refer to on the radio. But when the Safety Car is out they need less time because the cars are passing by more slowly. Toto Wolff said last week that the ‘Safety Car pit window’ time at Monaco was only 12 seconds. However in the case of Rosberg before the Safety Car appeared he had Vettel 1.7 seconds behind him, who in turn was 11.5 seconds ahead of Daniil Kvyat. Neither Rosberg nor Vettel had a ‘Safety Car window’ over the next driver behind them. Moreover, had Rosberg entered the pits, Vettel would have seen him do so and could have chosen to stay out, inherit Rosberg’s track position, and hope his tyres would hold out until the end. This would surely have been a far more attractive option for Vettel than pitting in the expectation he would fall behind Kvyat.
You are almost correct about Vettel to the 4th car... You said about 12 seconds ..it was 11.5 so you aren't that far off. And you are totally correct that Vettel would have lost places had he pit and I am sure Mercedes had this same info....so...in short..they panicked! Ferrari are dictating Mercedes strategy which shouldn't happen..Mercedes has the fastest car but not the best strategists..missing Ross badly.
F1 have released transcroipt. Driver said others will be on new tyres and the team never thought say that his teammate wasn't coming in and there was no movement at Ferrari - not good. Bring back Ross please oh anyone think F1 bosses doing a bit of stirring!!
