LONDON. – Lewis Hamilton could have completed last Sunday’s Turkish Grand Prix without stopping but he would have finished lower than the fifth place he ended up with, his Mercedes team said in a debrief on Wednesday.
Seven-time Formula One world champion Hamilton had wanted to go the distance on intermediate tires after starting 11th on a wet afternoon due to engine penalties but eventually pitted from third place.
The race cost the Briton the overall championship lead, with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen moving six points clear after finishing runner-up to Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas.
Hamilton had angrily questioned Mercedes’ tactics at the time, but the team’s chief technical officer James Allison said the outcome would have been worse had he not followed instructions.
“In all likelihood, we would have got to the end of the race on one set of tires, able to circulate without difficulty,” said Allison.
“The question is, how quick would we have been? And the evidence there is pretty clear: we would have been very slow.
“Lewis’s lap times were starting to get worse lap by lap by lap and while he would have made it to the end of the race, the pace would have been quite dismal by the time he got there.”
Allison said the optimum in hindsight would have been to have pitted around lap 36 or 37 while lap 41 would have been “a fourth-place type of stop”. Instead, Hamilton continued for another nine laps.
By then the prediction was that he would end up seventh or eighth without pitting. — Reuters
