27 September 2023 , 15:53
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Mercedes' strategy chief has explained why George Russell was placed on a less-than-ideal race strategy which ultimately cost him at the Japanese Grand Prix.
The Suzuka circuit is notoriously tough on tyres, making a two-stop strategy the optimal strategy on most occasions. But Mercedes opted to pit Russell just once in Sunday's race.
In the end, it was a gamble which did not pay off. He was running fifth with a few laps to go but was slowing down Lewis Hamilton behind him, while Carlos Sainz was closing in on them both.
The team made the decision to order Russell to allow Hamilton past. That call allowed the seven-time world champion to secure fifth place, but the other Brit was left powerless to defend against the Ferrari.
Explaining the decision, head of race strategy Rosie Wait said the team felt it was worth the risk in the event they had over-estimated how much tyre degradation there would be. "Given we were starting behind all our main competitors, our focus strategically in that race was how do we regain some track position?" she said in a video released by the team.
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"If you do the same strategy as everyone else, which we knew was going to be a two-stop, you can potentially gain one or two places at each stop with an undercut. We knew the one-stop was unlikely to be faster than the two-stop, but George had very little to lose. We were already behind everyone and so it was likely we could take a risk without any big downsides.
"The benefit of the one-stop is that if we were a bit wrong with our numbers, there is a chance that the degradation comes in slightly lower, overtaking is slightly harder than we expected, and George can hold off some cars at the end of the race.
"On the other hand, even if he does have to convert back to a two-stop, being on that offset one-stop strategy gave him track position for a really large portion of the race. He would have been quids in if a Safety Car or a VSC [Virtual Safety Car] have been deployed."
Wait also hinted that an early safety car for debris on track had played a part in convincing the team to commit to the one-stop for Russell. She added: "When we were discussing strategy plans at the start of the race, Plan A was a two-stop. Plan B was very much a one-stop, and we understood the factors that would bring that into play.
"If we saw lower degradation, if we saw tricky overtaking but also if we had the right safety car interruption. The first few laps of the race being under safety car conditions give the tyres a much easier time. It effectively makes the race a shorter race and the shorter the race is, the more competitive the one stop could be."