Mercedes admit to ‘clear mistake’ with Hamilton’s strategy

Lewis Hamilton being given soft tyres for the start of last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix was a “clear mistake” in hindsight, according to Mercedes Technical Director James Allison.

After claiming third on the grid at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, just ahead of team mate George Russell, Hamilton broke the trend of the drivers around him – who had opted for medium tyres – by lining up on soft rubber.

Hamilton did all he could to stay with the lead McLaren and Red Bull machines of Lando Norris and Max Verstappen in the opening laps but soon dropped back and then made a much earlier pit stop than his rivals to take on fresh tyres.

It was a strategy Hamilton openly questioned over the radio during the race, with the seven-time world champion initially fearing that he would not be able to make it to the end via a lengthy stint on hards.

He ultimately took the chequered flag in sixth position, having not only lost a place to Russell, but also McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who made up ground late on after extending their first stints.

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Speaking in Mercedes’ post-Singapore debrief, Allison was quick to concede that Hamilton’s soft-hard strategy, rather than the more conventional medium-hard approach, made life difficult for their driver.

“Before I give the explanation, I’ll just start off by saying we shouldn’t have started on the softs – that was a mistake,” Allison stated. “If we could turn back time, we would do what those around us did and select the mediums.

“The reasoning was that the soft tyre very often allows you to get away from the start abruptly and allows you a good chance of jumping a place or two in the opening laps of the race. We had no real expectation before the race that we were going to suffer the sort of difficulties that we then experienced on the soft rubber.

“So, we imagined we would get the upside of the soft rubber, of getting a place or two. We didn’t, because that just isn’t the way the starts played out. Then we hoped that the downside of the soft being a bit more fragile wouldn’t really play out particularly badly.

“If you look back over the years in Singapore, on the whole the pace starts very, very easy at a Singapore race and the drivers then build up the pace over many, many laps, leaving a soft tyre perfectly okay to run relatively deep into the pit window.

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“So, we didn’t get the places at the start, the pace started building up from around about Lap 5 and that left Lewis with a car that was not particularly happy anyway, suffering from quite poor tyre degradation and needing to come in early as a consequence and really ruined his race for him. Just a clear mistake.”

Allison was then asked about Hamilton having a new medium tyre available after starting on softs and if that was considered for deployment by the team later in the race – particularly in the event of a Safety Car period.

“It was considered, it was certainly there as a great weapon had there been a Safety Car at an opportune moment in the race,” he continued. “That would have been one of the upsides of that strategy.

“Once embarked upon the soft-hard strategy, we were considering changing to a two-stop for Lewis at various points during the race. But although that would have put him out on fresher rubber and he would have been swift on that fresher rubber, all our calculations suggested that he would not actually have gained back the pit stop loss.

“So, it was there in the hutch, could have used it, would have been good at a Safety Car, but in a normal uninterrupted race, which for the first time in forever we got in Singapore, that tyre was not a thing that would have helped Lewis’ weekend.”