James Vowles opens up in Mercedes debrief about the strategy decision they took in F1 Mexico GP and why they were competitive plus engine cuts.
For Mercedes, the F1 Mexico GP saw their best qualifying of 2022 which ended up in Lewis Hamilton in runner up and George Russell in fourth. The altitude and slightly cooler conditions helped them and Ferrari’s lack of pace in the race further aided their chances to finish ahead of both their cars and split the Red Bulls
But the strategy was a big talking point where Mercedes opted for medium-hard as opposed to starting on soft which both Red Bull and Ferrari did. In fact, George Russell pressed on to go longer and switch to soft but it didn’t work out even though that ended up being a quality strategy for those who tried it.
Vowles expands on why Mercedes stuck with medium-hard and why they didn’t opt for a split strategy at that start itself. Apart from that, he touches on why Mercedes were a bit more competitive in Mexico and the engine cuts faced by Hamilton in both qualifying and race.
Strategy, Decisions, longer on medium’s perhaps –
Vowles: “It’s a very good question and one that we are reviewing here internally this week as we do with all of our decisions during a race. Let’s break it down. With Lewis first of all he was in a position where Perez stopped and we only had a lap to cover him really, a lap or two. We had two choices let Perez effectively undercut us but go long and then fit the Soft tyres or stop and given the length of stint the Hard would have been really the tyre that could have made it, the Soft would not have made that level of stint. We decided that track position was more important at that stage and furthermore we had some data from Latifi that had already stopped and Hard wasn’t terrible. So we opted to stop, put Lewis on the Hard tyre and go towards the end of the race under the hope that potentially Verstappen was going to drop off that Medium curve much as we did see degradation at the end of our stint”.
“With George there was a lot more opportunity to really keep going long and fit the Soft tyre and that was the plan. It was what we had discussed before the race and it is what we discussed live during the race with George as well. We carried on the stint and what we could see is that actually relative to Perez and Lewis George was starting to lose a lot of time, that Medium tyre really just struggling at the end of its degradation stint, you would have heard George come on and really start to give indications about that as well. The question now was given we were struggling on the Medium tyre after just 30 odd laps would the Soft tyre really make the stint required”.
“It was a hard choice but we decided on balance stopping and fitting the Hard tyre would probably bring us a better result in the belief that if we are struggling on the Medium tyre here Perez probably won’t make it to the end of the race and they need to stop one more time. That in hindsight was a wrong decision and I think if you look back and you look at Ricciardo we should have just kept going. Yes, there was degradation and it was getting more and more but we wouldn’t have to have gone much further before we could fit the Soft tyre. What the result would have been I am not sure but I think it would have been a better race than what we did.”
Split strategy at lights out or pit stop time –
Vowles: “So, first of all I pick up the term aggressive. By starting on the Medium, which is a big difference relative to both Ferrari and Red Bull, that is sort of aggressive in many forms because you are doing something very different to them. We believed that Red Bull would be a faster race car, so doing exactly the same thing as they were doing probably won’t lead to a race win but starting on the Medium, if the Soft degrades more than we were expecting it to or the Medium degrades more than we expected to so a one stop is just simply not possible anymore”.
“That now means the Medium/Hard one stop creates an opportunity that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. As for why we didn’t split them on the grid, we had two cars in a strong position and felt that actually we could weaken ourselves by splitting them as it was it probably would have been George on the Soft and who knows whether he would have kept that position or not but had he dropped back having a car on Soft behind one on Medium creates complications”.
“The next element of it is why didn’t we split them later on which is a question I have covered off we should have, I think George should have been on the Soft. What it would change? I am not sure at this state, what I can say though is rewind the race what would we do differently? We wouldn’t split them but we would have started both on Soft. I don’t think it would have made a dramatic difference to where Lewis was, he would have finished second but George definitely lost out at the start of the race and I think the extra grip may have helped him to hold on to the position there. So second or third may have been possible and we definitely would have been close to Verstappen on how we were racing.”
Mercedes very competitive in Mexico all weekend –
Vowles: “I think there is a few factors that came together at the same time. The first is that we put a large update kit on in Austin and that did move us forward and that evidence was even more present really in Mexico. The second is that we are very good when we are running maximum downforce and others running maximum downforce as well and that was evident in Zandvoort, in Budapest for example and it was no different in Mexico. In Mexico everyone really was running their maximum rear wing, their maximum amount of downforce that they could get away with”.
“I think also Austin being a very tricky windy conditioned race meant that perhaps we didn’t see the full extent of the performance update whereas in Mexico there was no real wind to speak of. We have a car now that seems to be balanced and is working well. How it performs across the next two is hard to tell, obviously in the case of Mexico it looked a little bit like that Ferrari actually dropped back and I suspect that won’t be the case as we move forwards.”
Mercedes engine issues for Hamilton –
Vowles: “You would have also heard those comments from qualifying as well. So, let me try and explain what was going on. We were suffering a little bit with engine cuts and here is the reason why. You generally map the engine for the conditions it is most used in which is sea level, that’s where most of the racing takes place, when you suddenly go to these levels of altitude you are in a very different condition and instead of having an engine that is really highly tuned you are back into a condition where you have to do lots of work with the Power Unit in a very short space of time to try and map out these irregularities. I am confident all teams will suffer this it won’t be unique to ourselves”.
“It’s typically accentuated in qualifying because you are very quickly and rapidly applying throttle pedal which means that the turbo and fuelling systems need to keep up with that change very quickly and normally it’s better in the race. We were hoping that the race would not be as bad and it comes from a factor when the drivers are requesting throttle and picking up throttle it was simply not delivering the power they request quick enough, so enough fuel or enough air. It can be tuned out in time and were we got to in the race wasn’t a bad position I think qualifying was worse. But still enough to cause a small amount of performance loss for both drivers.”
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