“They might have let it off the hook there”: Christian Horner criticizes Mercedes for poor strategy call which cost Lewis Hamilton a British GP victory
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Christian Horner
It is no news that strategy calls play an important part in making or breaking a racer’s performance in the Grand Prix because of the heavy dependence that the F1 drivers have on their engineers and tactical teams. Yesterday, when Lewis Hamilton was desperately chasing down all the cars in front of him to get to the top of the grid, Christian Horner believes a slight miscalculation by the Mercedes strategy team made it impossible for the 7-time World Champion to conjure up enough speed in his car to get to P1 in his home Grand Prix.
When Lewis Hamilton came fifth in the Qualifying at the British GP, everyone was expecting him to put up a great show at a track that he clearly knows like the back of his hand, to take down Carlos Sainz and snatch the lead of the grid. But unfortunately, just when Lewis seemed to be quickly moving up the ranks to make his way to the top, he was called into the pits for a tyre change and, if Christian Horner is to be believed, he was given the wrong set of tyres which sabotaged his race completely.
The Briton, who would have made World Record if he won the British Grand Prix for the ninth time this year, could hardly manage to secure a podium finish for himself after fighting tooth and nail with Charles Leclerc for the final spot in the top 3.
Christian Horner says Lewis Hamilton could have won the British GP if not for Mercedes’ mistaken strategy call
The Mercedes F1 team is known to have one of the most flawless strategy teams as they have already maintained a record of winning the Constructors’ Championship for a whopping eight consecutive times. But yesterday, during the British Grand Prix, they made a poor judgement which cost Lewis Hamilton a race win in his home circuit at Silverstone, according to Red Bull boss Christian Horner.
While speaking of Lewis’ powerful overtakes while his former rival Max Verstappen fell down the ranks due to damage to his Red Bull, Christian Horner criticised the Mercedes team for not picking the right tyres for Lewis. He said, “I was actually surprised that Lewis, with the amount of laps to go, and the degradation that he’s shown, didn’t take a soft.
“He went onto the hard tyre on lap 33 and I actually thought he was going to go on to the soft, because that would have made it much easier for him to make the offset in grip. It felt like they [Mercedes] have maybe been let off the hook there.”
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