Wolff Addresses Hamilton's Criticism of Mercedes' F1 Strategy

Wolff addresses Hamilton’s concerns over Mercedes’ strategy at Spa, explaining the rationale behind the team’s pit stop decisions amid mounting pressure from competitors.

Lewis Hamilton ultimately secured victory at Spa under somewhat contentious circumstances but made clear upon finishing that there were two issues that troubled his stride towards a conventional win.

Firstly, he was not timely informed that George Russell was shifting to a one-stop strategy. With this knowledge, he could have increased his pace as he still had “plenty of tyre life left.”

Hamilton also disclosed that he had considered a one-stop strategy himself (read more here).

“If you listen to the radio, you might have caught what I said to the team most of the time. But yes, I believe the tyres were quite good. I still had a lot of tyre and I was going faster. And I did not want to make a second stop in the first place.”

So why didn’t Mercedes F1 follow Hamilton’s lead as they did for his teammate?

Toto Wolff explained that although Hamilton might have felt his tyres were in good condition at the end of each stint, the decision to pit was solely related to his ability to maintain track position against an encroaching Leclerc and Piastri.

“As a driver, you do not have an overview of the entire situation because he said his tyres were good. But at that point, no one had anticipated a single stop. We needed to cover the cars behind, I believe it was Piastri and Leclerc. And you can see that all the others opted for two logical stops.”

“It simply wasn’t anticipated. So, what we did with Lewis was absolutely the right thing to do. George managed to extend his tyre life, but ultimately paid the price with a disqualification. The same could have happened to Lewis.”

“Anyway, this could not have been anticipated because if it had been, any other top team would have tried it too.”

Wolff admits that Mercedes also had a close call with Piastri closing in rapidly behind their two drivers.

When asked about the temptation to order a position swap, Wolff responded: “Not with team instructions, but probably if we had had one more lap, it could have been considered because it would have protected the first place, and George would have finished third. But I am glad we did not have to make that decision.”