The once mighty Mercedes AMG Formula One team look a shadow of their former selves at last weekends Grand Prix in Imola. Impressive practice sessions on Friday, where the team’s upgrades on the car appeared to give them a step forward proved ultimately to be another false dawn as Lewis Hamilton trailed home some thirty five seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen.
Fred Vasseur quipped he believed Mercedes had made progress when asked after the race, “The Mercedes? They were 28 seconds behind Charles at the end of the race, so yes, I think they got a little bit closer.” Ferrari raised eyebrows when they appointed the Frenchman team boss as the replacement for life long Ferrari employee Matteo Binotto, yet Vasseur is quickly becoming a paddock favourite with his understated manner and his witty dealings with the media.
Russell robbed of P6
Yet the story of Mercedes weekend was not merely one of another woeful performance but of some internal politics which saw George Russell robbed of his richly deserved sixth place. Russell again out qualified his team mate Lewis Hamilton and was ahead of him on track in the Grand Prix after the expected first and only round of pit stops.
Then with around fifteen laps to go Hamilton began to close the seven second gap to George who appeared unable to respond. Yet with only a a couple of laps of tyre offset, George had pitted two laps before Lewis, it was unlikely given the difficulty in overtaking that Hamilton would have caught and passed the sister Mercedes car.
Behind Hamilton was Sergio Perez who had started the Grand Prix on the hard tyre unlike most of the rest of the field. The Red Bull driver stopped on lap 40 for the medium tyre, which of course is quicker, and he set about chasing down the two Mercedes ahead. However, Perez made little impact on the 30 second gap to Hamilton and with Russell even further down the road, Mercedes realised they could pit George for fresh rubber and claim the fastest lap extra point. The lost time in changing tyres was 29 seconds.
Had they done this with Hamilton he would have returned to the race around 2 seconds behind the Mexican driver, but with fresh tyres compared to Checo’s which were 12 laps old, even the underperforming Mercedes would have had little difficulty passing the number two Red Bull car.
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Wolff: ‘Decision not diffivult’
The team communicated the plan to Russell who immediately knew this would put him around 20 seconds behind Hamilton with just 11 laps to go. Even the fresh rubber wouldn’t provide George with the pace he needed to retake his team mate and retain sixth place.
Russell asked if he complied with the plan would Hamilton would then let him by as is often the usual play when team orders are given which will disadvantage one of their drivers. He was met with the curt response of “no.”
Mercedes claim the data showed Russell was at risk from Sergio Perez, which is highly surprising given Checo would have needed to be over two seconds a lap quicker than George for the final ten laps of the Grand Prix. Even Max Verstappen on a brand new soft tyre would struggle to deliver that kind of time advantage with just 12 minutes of the race remaining.
“[It was] not difficult,” Wolff told the written media, referring to the decision to pull Russell in for the second stop.
Other stopped 10 laps earlier than George
“I think taking the point for the fastest lap was a little goodie, but the lap-times were dropping off because we had pitted him early.
“There was the risk of losing the position a few laps later to Perez, and beating one of the Red Bulls in the circumstances was advantageous.
“The wear life of the tyres said that at lap 57, the tyre will be gone and that is why we made the call.”
Yet out there on track at the time was Daniel Ricciardo, Yuki Tsunoda who had stopped for the hard tyre on laps 11, 12 and 13 respectively while Russell had stopped on lap 21. The RB drivers and Hulkenberg each ran their tyres to the end of the race, Ricciardo’s stint being a whopping 52 laps.
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Russell plays the PR game
A deflated Russell who had the beating of his team mate all weekend said after the race: “As a driver, you want to finish the highest position possible. And all weekend, I’ve been ahead of my teammate. I was ahead the whole race comfortably, and then that was sort of just losing the position for the sake of it. So we’ve got the extra point. As I said, I’m not going to talk about it tonight.”
Clearly the Mercedes PR machine had got to Russell who suggested there could have been a problem because they had stopped so early for the change of tyres.
“I think we pitted a bit too early,” pondered Russell to Sky F1. “It compromised the race slightly on my side of the garage. But as a team, we came away from the extra point with the fastest lap.”
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Mercedes avoided Hamilton speaking his mind
Behind the scenes Mercedes were concerned if they’d requested Hamilton do the stop for the fastest lap, he would have complained when he returned to the race finding himself 2 seconds behind Sergio Perez. With the multiplicity of problems facing the team due to their bad car design, Bradley Lord who is in charge of communications, did not want Hamilton mouthing negative comments to the media after the event.
There was not a cats chance in heaven Perez would have caught Russell if he’d stayed out, and if Lewis Hamilton had been pitted for the fastest lap and was unable to overtake Perez on his new tyres, then Ferrari will be hanging their heads in their hands and wondering what they’ve done by ditching Carlos Sainz for a fading ex-F1 world champion.
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Hamilton is a spent force, this whole season so far he has been out qualified and beaten on the track by his junior partner who seems to have the knack to extract a bit more out of the much maligned Mercedes than Lewis, surely being a 7 times champion he should have the experience and expertise to maximize better the car’s limited potential than George, but no instead Lewis has become a whinger, always complaining and blaming everyone else but himself. Look how they shortchanged George by given up his track position to Lewis and then played the political game so that Lewis doesn’t embarress Mercedes in the post race interviews by whinging again.I wish him well at Ferrari where he will have to earn his stripes as Le Clec will not just bend backwards like George.There will be level playing fields.
Not quite sure thats how it was going to pan out Lewis was catching George rapidly and was going to pass him anyway, by pitting George Merc gained an extra point, LH however was soundly beaten all weekend by George but as soon as LH saw himself catching he seemed to perk up , we can only hope the new challenge of Ferrari energises LH.