George Russell, Charles Leclerc discuss of their Lap 1 strategy in F1 British GP which undone their race, as Toto Wolff and Frederic Vasseur are blunt in assessment.
The commentators suspected that few may flock into the pits at the end of the formation lap in F1 British GP to gamble on slick tyres to start the grand prix. While many would have pointed towards drivers from outside the Top 10, but it turned out that two from top half did it too.
Mercedes’ Russell was the first and he was followed by Ferrari’s Leclerc. It all went downhill for them from there on, as they struggled to get back into the top half due to variable factors. The circuit and the weather conditions didn’t give them the chance of a fightback at all.
Russell eventually managed to get a point in 10th despite a crazy spin, while Leclerc had no luck which also included a grass moment when water got into his helmet in that one corner. The Brit didn’t think it was a bad gamble as he blamed extended Virtual Safety Car period for destroying their chance.
He felt they would be higher up if the first stint ran without VSC. By the time, they got to use the advantage, it started raining again. He backed the bold decision taken collectively, even though team boss Wolff termed the decisions to be catastrophic in the end.
It all started from the first decision and it extended to Andrea Kimi Antonelli and even their second time. He defended the bold call considering that their success rate has been better via that route. On the side of Ferrari, Leclerc regretted the decision he took on Lap 1, which left him vulnerable.
He already knew it was going to be a difficult grand prix, as Vasseur felt the team could have said no at that time, but listened to his driver. Leclerc noted that he apologised to Carlos Sainz for their second contact at Turn 15, but felt the first one at Turn 4 was fine hard racing.
Leclerc was positive about Lewis Hamilton’s pace and result in some solace for the team, while Vasseur highlighted their execution of the weekend, which included qualifying where it worked on Hamilton’s side but didn’t as much on the Monegasque, especially in Q3.
Strategy –
Russell: “I think pitting at the beginning was not a stupid decision because it was dry for 25 minutes. What we didn’t know is it would be 15 minutes of virtual safety car. When the virtual safety car ended, we had five seconds pace advantage over the guys on the inters. If only we had the whole stint of this, maybe we would have got back into the lead. But when it rains, it pours, and everything just went against us.”
Wolff: “Well, the driver is team. We’re all in this together. But the first call or the first decision from within the car and the people was terribly wrong. And that kind of made us spiral from bad to worse, because that triggered the stop for Kimi. When you see where Kimi was running, we should have simply kept him out with a split strategy and probably we would have been where Hulkenberg was, because he was ahead of him. That’s not to diminish Nico’s driving, which from far away looked very good. And then we had the wrong tyre on the car, because we believed the medium wouldn’t last with us, because Friday was bad. Another wrong decision. And then obviously the second stop was probably even more wrong than the first one. And that was basically the guillotine that fell. I wouldn’t say it’s a snowball effect.
“It was more like one action, driver, pit wall, action, triggered a situation that was already bad. And then it was simply, I think we can keep it very simple, the second decision when Kimi was wrong, the third decision was wrong. And I think the driver, pit wall communication was just very bad. I think at that stage [for second dry try decision] he was stuck behind Gasly, because the car’s performance was poor and he wasn’t able to pass. And then probably an act of being contrarian and doing something that is totally different than the others and hoping for that outcome. I think all of us together had a robust chat up there. And everybody acknowledges that the first decision was actually the catastrophic one.”
Leclerc: “I’m not sure. I mean, for sure this did not help. However, we were kind of nowhere the whole race. And when I say nowhere, it’s like really nowhere. I was a second off and on top of that I was doing lots of mistakes.I was really struggling to keep the car on track. So, it was an incredibly difficult day. I need to analyse what was going on. What did I do in terms of tools, in terms of setup, in terms of driving that made everything worse. Because today was extremely difficult.”
Vasseur: “Yeah, but we were a step down compared to McLaren. We had much more downforce than Max. But we were also much faster than Max. I’m not sure that the pure pace is the main issue today. What is true is that on Charles, the race was done in lap 1 when he made the call to pit for 6th. And then the main issue we had today was that we struggled a lot when we were in the dirty air to overtake. We spent our lives overtaking sometimes 10 laps and then we were much faster.
“I think it was a difficult weekend, difficult for the strategy. Today I think everybody has tons of regrets, except Norris probably and Nico. But when you finish a race like this, you always have the feeling that if I had pitted one lap before or one lap after, it would have been much better. Let’s be focused on the quali and the championship.”
Bold decision –
Russell: “In our position, if you play it safe, you’ll come home with a safe result. Of course, that would have probably been P4. Standing here now, do I wish I had P4? Of course. But we wanted to be bold; we wanted to be brave. We went for some bold decisions and ultimately it bit us, so yeah. Nowhere near, it is fun you are in a good place. I felt really strong at the beginning, on the dry tyres I was lapping a second faster than drivers on slicks and inters, but everything was a mess.”
Wolff: “I don’t know. I think we’ve taken some bold decisions in the past that won us races. Overall, if I put a percentage on it, or a number, I would say maybe 6 out of 10 decisions or 7 out of 10 decisions that were bold, in our case, they worked out. But today’s decisions were not bold. Today’s decisions were a total misjudgment of the situation. 17 degrees outside temperatures, how should that ever dry up? Today there wasn’t anything to look good on. It was all bad. I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for.”
Leclerc: “No, I’m not happy with the decision. That was my decision. I thought the first and second sector was kind of for slicks. The third sector was wet. But I expected it, I had seen it. But I expected the track to dry up a lot quicker. It did not. And I think we were quite a few to have done that mistake of thinking that it would dry up quickly. This is part of the reason why we had a bad race. But I would say that the biggest part was the lack of pace. And on that I want the answers before going back home. So, I’ll work hard to try and understand what was going on.”
Vasseur: “The call is coming from the driver for sure. But also to be fair, I could have said no. But as you said, they are on track. I think the issue in this kind of situation is that you are doing the formation lap behind the safety car very slowly. And you have to assess the level of grip in these conditions and I’m not sure that it’s that easy. Russell and Charles took the decision to pit for slicks. Easy to say at the end that it was not the right call. But I think Charles, lap one, understood that it was not the right call because he was already five seconds slower than the guy in front of him.”
Sainz incident, water in helmet –
Leclerc: “I did speak to him. I mean, in Turn 4 it was aggressive. But I don’t regret that. That’s the way I had to do it. It was the only place on track that I could overtake. The one in Turn 15 was a mistake from my side. And that was clearly my fault. And I went to see Carlos for that. Because I know it cost him points. And I’m sorry for that. As for water in eyes, [it was] difficult, but this was only a one-off. It was not something it was happening consistently but on that one particular corner, I don’t know what happened but the water went straight to the face and I couldn’t see anything. That wasn’t nice but luckily there was no around there.”
Positive seeing Hamilton’s race –
Leclerc: “I didn’t see Lewis’ race, but for sure he was much, much stronger than me. The only positive I would say is that whenever you’ve got Lewis in the same car. And being much faster than me today. There are definitely some things that I would learn from a day like this. Because when you struggle as a team and the two drivers are struggling. It’s more difficult to know what’s going wrong. There we’ve got an example of extreme in both ways.”
Qualifying execution –
Vasseur: “I would say the execution, clearly, because in Q1 and Q2, we had the same config on the car, everything was the same. We were able to be P1, P2. But again, coming back to the previous question, for details, and yesterday we had sun, cloud, sun, cloud, for details of track time, you can have a mega good car or a good car, and this is making a huge difference in the fight between five or six cars when everybody is in one or two tenths. But I think I would take the positive is that we are back into the fight, that it’s the first time of the season that FP1, FP2, FP3, Q1, Q2, not Q1 but Q2, we were there.
“And we have to do a better job in Q3 yesterday, but we are all aware of this. And it’s the positive of the weekend with the championship and the points compared to McLaren and Red Bull, for sure Mercedes and Red Bull, but it’s not enough that we are there, because we want to win races and we don’t want to score more points or win P4.”
Here’s Lewis Hamilton on British GP
Here’s how F1 British GP panned out
