Ted Kravitz questions who has power of Lewis Hamilton’s strategy at Mercedes

Ted Kravitz has questioned who has the final decision when it comes to Lewis Hamilton’s strategy as driver and team seemed to disagree during the Miami Grand Prix.

While his Mercedes team-mate George Russell rose from 12th to fifth thanks to a call to stay on the hard tyres and hope for a Safety Car, Hamilton found his own strategy to be somewhat lacking.

That was highlighted during the Safety Car period caused by a crash between Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris, allowing the seven-time former World Champion the opportunity to swap his hard tyres for mediums or even softs for the remaining 10 laps of the race.

However, there appeared to be hesitation from the team and Hamilton was heard over the radio asking them to make the decision rather than ask him.

“That’s what your job is, make the decision for me – you’ve got all the details, I don’t,” Hamilton told Sky Sports F1 after the race. “That’s what you rely on the guys for but today they gave it to me and I don’t understand it, but anyways…

“Just a bit unfortunate with the Safety Car but at least we got points today, we are finishing, reliability is good. I’m excited to, at some stage, take a step forward, which we haven’t yet.”

Sky’s Ted Kravitz has now questioned who has the final say on Hamilton’s strategy decision and whether a change has been made from last season.

“There was a bit of confusion under the Safety Car for a possible second stop onto the soft tyres,” said Kravitz during his Notebook show. “[It was] probably right in the end that they didn’t do it because it would have been difficult to overtake even on the soft tyres and even if he had, he probably would have only overtaken George Russell.

“I thought it was interesting there was the confusion. Has there been a sea change in Hamilton directing strategy in the way we saw him do last year?

“Has he thought ‘do you know want, I’ve learned from last year – sometimes it worked, sometimes it…