In safety car situations during a race, it effectively causes a reset on the race, the field gets bunched up and everyone gets to be closer to their rivals in front. So it begs the question, why did the Lewis Hamilton Monaco pit stop happen?
In Monaco any racing fan knows that track position is king, no matter the situation you find yourself in unless the tyres are that worn you can defend because it’s always so difficult to overtake. Ayrton Senna demonstrated this in 1992 after Nigel Mansell had to make an emergency pit stop and fell behind the Brazilian. Lap after lap Nigel looked to pass but albeit on tyres much older Ayrton defended his position and won the race.
After the spectacular crash involving Max Verstappen trying to pass Romain Grosjean into turn one, this in turn brought out the virtual safety car and subsequently the actual safety car. Lewis was told to make an unnecessary pit stop despite having such a huge lead, even with the smoothest of pitstops the gap wasn’t big enough to keep the lead. So why did the team bring him in with only a very short distance left to run?
Lewis is understandably quite unhappy with this decision after working so hard to qualify on pole position even after just signing a new three year deal with the team.
Analysis of this decision is well underway and I’m sure that there will be some critical revisions to their strategy calls in the future, because for this fan of the sport, this has to be of the worst caliber of mistakes by a team.
Next stop on the calendar is Canada, Lewis’ most successful circuit and I’m sure he’ll be out for victory harder than ever to prove his will to win a third world title burns brighter than ever.
Main image:
