Mercedes explain strategic choices at Monaco: “With Lewis Hamilton, we had nothing to lose”
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Lewis Hamilton was stuck behind Fernando Alonso for the whole dry running at this weekend's Monaco GP
Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin has explained that both of their drivers were on different strategies. This manifested as Hamilton switching to intermediate tires before he went on to the slick tires later. In comparison, George Russell went straight to the slick tires.
This decision was made due to the track conditions in the race. The race had started almost an hour later than scheduled, behind a safety car and in extremely wet conditions. However, the rain stopped and the track dried up almost completely by lap 20. For George Russell, changing to intermediates was never a possibility, but for Lewis Hamilton, there were other factors to consider.
“If George had done that [changed to intermediates] he would have lost two places and in Monaco, you don’t want that. [But] With Lewis, we really had nothing to lose, because we could see that Alpine wanted to try and get through.”
The Alpine drivers, Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon were on the same strategy as George Russell – switching straight to the dry tires. Mercedes tried to counter this by doing the opposite with Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton had two separate incidents with Ocon before this, one of which the French driver was later penalized for. Hamilton was able to make his way past Ocon eventually, but the spent the rest of his race stuck behind Fernando Alonso, who held the pack up.
Why didn’t Mercedes bring Lewis Hamilton in earlier?
Andrew Shovlin also elaborated on the decision to not bring Lewis Hamilton into the pits earlier. Pierre Gasly had been the foremost of the intermediate runners, and after a while displayed some strong pace, running in 9th at one point, having started 17th. Speaking in a debrief video released on the official Mercedes channel, Shovlin said:
“It was all about what was happening behind Lewis [Hamilton] on track, and he never actually had a clear stop window.”
“If he had a clear window, we would definitely have done it earlier and we knew that the intermediate would perform well. The question is, can a car with intermediates overtake a car on wets?” Gasly had been able to do this for a while, but Hamilton found it difficult with the Alpines.
“And we saw with Lewis when we eventually went for that, with Esteban, it was a very difficult thing to do.”
It is always difficult to overtake in Monaco, even if you may have more pace or fresher tires. Lewis Hamilton’s experiences with the Alpine duo of Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon proved that, and he found it difficult to get past them. George Russell eventually finished fifth, having eclipsed Lando Norris after the latter’s pitstop. Lewis Hamilton finished eighth, stuck behind Fernando Alonso for a large duration of the race.
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