Lewis Hamilton was all set to win a nicely controlled Australian Grand Prix.
Though the pace of Lewis in the Mercedes was not quite as crushing as his final, frightening
lap in qualifying had made everyone suspect, the Melbourne circuit with this current regulations
made for a trickier terrain for overtaking than a B road in North Wales.
So with Hamilton, Raikkonen and Vettel all queued up in a stalemate, Ferrari pitted Raikkonen
ahead of Lewis in an attempt to break the tie – they were going for the undercut (and
I’ve got a video on that) Of course, that wasn’t going to work as
Lewis has a nice cushion over Kimi, pitted on the next lap and came out ahead of him.
But crucially at this point, they were both behind Vettel.
Who did not come in.
In fact he stayed out for quite a few laps.
And then the virtual safety car came out, Vettel pitted while everyone was under VSC
speed limited conditions and came out in the lead.
Let’s have a little look at how that worked.
Now the numbers I use here are going to be very rough – for example only – just to
give you the idea of what happened.
Under normal racing conditions – no safety care or anything – taking a pit stop costs
you about 18 seconds compared to people who stayed out on track.
Under the virtual safety car the pit stop only costs you about 12 seconds as the normal
lap times are so much slower and you don’t have to pace yourself on pit entry and exit
So, Hamilton is about 5 seconds ahead of Vettel, let’s say.
Then he pits, loses 18 seconds to him, which brings him out around 13 seconds behind Vettel.
But Vettel pits under the Virtual Safety Car, losing only 12 seconds to Hamilton.
As Hamilton is about 13 seconds behind at this point, this would bring Vettel out around1
seconds in front.
Now as I said I made up all these times – 18 seconds, 12 seconds, etc – just to give
an example.
But Mercedes should have known the exact numbers for all these scenarios and calibrated their
models correctly.
But somewhere along the line they got it wrong.
See, once Hamilton pitted and it became clear that Vettel was not going to pit in lock step
– instead choosing to, in effect, desynchronise his strategy – Mercedes will have been telling
Hamilton to get within a certain range of Vettel just in case there’s a safety car
or something.
The time lost during a pitstop is called a pitstop delta, by the way.
That’s cause the greek letter ‘delta’ is used to indicate ‘change’.
So if you take a normal pitstop, your laptime will change by 18 seconds.
Anyway, so Mercedes thought the Safety Car pitstop delta was about 15 seconds so they
made sure Hamilton kept up the pace to get close enough to Vettel so that – even if
a Safety Car occurred – Vettel would not be able to get ahead of Hamilton.
But they were wrong – it was 12 seconds.
Once the VSC was called, there was nothing they could do as Hamilton’s pace was locked
in under Virtual Safety Car conditions.
As an aside, I’m using the word ‘Safety Car’ and ‘Virtual Safety Car’ interchangeably
here as the pace you have to adhere to under the Virtual Safety Car is the same as the
pace you have to adhere to when catching the safety car.
So for any quick dives into the pits, the pitstop delta is essentially the same.
So, the question is this – did Ferrari throw Kimi under the bus?
Knowing they were all locked together in a queue will little hope of overtaking, did
they pit Kimi early, knowing Hamilton would have to cover him off by pitting the very
next lap.
Thus they give Vettel the better overall strategy and a chance to overtake – particularly
if a Safety Car came out?
I reckon Kimi was trying to work out how to win the race – he certainly wasn’t falling
back from Lewis.
To end up third behind his winning team mate must be gutting.
To be honest – Vettel couldn’t have beaten either Kimi or Lewis without a Safety Car
type event so Ferrari were likely just giving Vettel the opportunity to benefit from any
spanners thrown in the works.
And they got lucky.
But let’s talk about Bottas.
Bottas may well have lost this race for Mercedes and here’s why.
If he hadn’t crashed in qualifying and put himself out of contention, he would probably
have been hanging about with the Ferraris.
Probably 4th.
If Bottas had been in 4th, Mercedes could have pitted him early to make force Vettel
into pitting.
Because at that point, a Safety Car would be less likely than Bottas getting the undercut
and passing Vettel in the pits.
Ferrari would have had to cover Bottas off, and none of this would have happened.
Lewis Hamilton didn’t have a wingman on race day and it cost him.
I mean, Mercedes getting their numbers wrong cost him too.
A bad day for Team Mercedes I’d say.
Not as bad as some teams though.