Did Neubauer have radio communication to coach his drivers? Did he follow his cars on the track with GPS? Did Mercedes have an army of computer boffins analysing the race of all participants? No, Neubauer had only pre-race briefings, a pair of stop-watches and a pit board at his disposition. He was seen waving his umbrella from time to time, but was often ignored. Compared to now, race strategy was practically non-existant in pre-war races. Some drivers received the chequered flag not knowing they were leading the race!
There you go...from James Allen. It was just a dumb move by all concerned. Lewis didn't need to contemplate stopping.....and Nico and Vettel never considered it. But hey....one mistake a year is allowed, isn't it? With a new and more robust supersoft tyre from Pirelli on offer, this was always likely to be a one-stop race; indeed some teams felt that they could do the entire 260km race distance on a single set of soft tyres, if the rules allowed it. This actually led to a gamble by Toro Rosso on Carlos Sainz’ car; the Spaniard was penalised for missing an FIA weight check during qualifying and had to start from the pit lane. The team pitted him early on lap 12, without losing significant track position and he then benefitted as others ahead of him pitted or dropped out of the race, to gain places up to 10th place, which is an excellent return from such a lowly start position. He had no problem doing 66 laps on a set of tyres.
more.....sounds like lewis' ego had a hand in it too. Its tempting to think that Hamilton didnt just want to win Monaco, he wanted to dominate it and he said after the race of his pace relative to Rosberg, I blew him away. This had been his objective for the weekend and it is possible it was behind his concern over the tyres for the restart. On fresh supersofts after the restart he would have pulled away and won by probably 30 seconds. His part in motivating the decision to stop on Lap 65 should not be underestimated, it certainly seems to have influenced the strategists, but the strategy team has to make the final call and at the decisive moment they lost sight of the real gap and the fact that the Safety Car with Hamilton behind it was travelling more slowly than the target lap times the cars must drive at during a Safety Car period, making the maths horrendously complicated.
I disagree. Drivers in the old days used to make decisions, current drivers just do exactly as they are told. They are told when to speed up and when to conserve. In the old days it was just a pit board with their position and the gaps to other drivers, the drivers turned that into their own strategy. Pete
Aircon, I've sort of said this already with my "rub their faces in it" post: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/143957132-post524.html Pete
Was the team then involved with aiding Lewis with an entirely idiotic objective and they made an entirely idiotic decision, costing them dearly? This was well deserved for all of them, especially the team getting themselved involved with that. Well deserved then. And this really underlines his mood after the race. Instead of a heroic 'blowing away' he has thrown it away so unnessecarily. Well if he indeed happens to lose the WDC due to this weekend.... no words. This explains so well to me why you need to have a Rosberg and a Hamilton in a team, like Button and Hamilton works... One smart racer combined with an emotional one. One that thinks for the season, one that thinks for the moment.
Hamboner is no schumi, Alonso or Vettel. His decision whether to pit was likely a decision he made at the start - if the safety car comes out when we are on softs, pit for super softs to get the speed to the end, just like most other races where they all do the same thing. He isn't a shrewd enough driver to recalculate his habitual reaction during a race, so when the safety car happened, he went with his instinct, thinking the rest would follow. Simple as that. I don't believe all the bs that Mercedes and he come out with blaming the safety car itself and loss of gps. It smacks of a simple lack of attention to detail. Monaco, don't pit unless your tyres are f***ed. simple
+1 Loss of GPS was irrelevant because if WE have the data that showed how far Rosberg was behind, Mercedes would absolutely have it. If we from our chairs can see that the gap vs delta wasn't big enough, merc would have known. Their immediate advice was not to pit, but ham insisted. Merc's apology is a way of massaging Lew's ego.
That last sentence exactly sums up in a few words what I had thought before the race, during the race and after. Even I would have known, which is to say something. Rgds
This is what happens when Ferrari puts pressure on the team. Last year they would have just pitted Nico too and restabilished the order. I don't believe Mercedes is a well organised team at all and it starts showing, now their engine is a tad less of an advantage. Wolff, Lauda and Lowe together don't make a Brawn.
They should apologize to each other as I stated earlier. Its not mostly the team at all. The driver and team drove this together.... --Asked "was there input from Hamilton on whether to stop or not? Post race interview appeared to suggest there was", Wolff replied: "We told him to stay out and Lewis said 'not good' & that the tyres had lost temperature. We had one second to react and, combined with our wrong timing data, we made the mistake of calling him in".-- Merc to trust gut feeling, slam rumours
He would have done the same in 2014 had Nico's parking in Q incident not happened. All making sense to you now is it ..
I personally do not understand the whole discussion. Hamilton is part of that team and they lost just as they win together. You can not take out Hamilton of the team whenever it suits you...The team is nothing without him and he is nothing without the team... Just as I said before: last time the team helped him with strategy when he screwed the start and this time the strategists failed. But you guys want to tell us that it was purely his achievement last time and purely the team fault this time but yet you call others blind or with blinkers...
On a positive note, early Verstappen detractor Mika Hakkinen has mentioned he was wrong about Verstappen and is very impressed, and even said that Grosjean took a different line/braking to previous laps and that the penalty is not fair...Verstappen likely would've passed Grosjean.
Without mentioning the more onerous aspects of this matter, if you reread all my posts on the subject, I think you will find I do not lay the full blame on any singular person. Put simply it was a team effort cock-up.
