Following an extremely heavy pre-race downpour, which forced the start to be postponed by more than an hour, the Singapore Grand Prix began on a very wet track.
In the nervy race which followed, teams waited and watched each other to see who would blink first and commit to a switch from intermediate to slick tyres.
All 20 drivers took the start on the lightly-treaded intermediate rubber. At least one of them, Lewis Hamilton, told his team he wasn’t happy with the selection. As he can’t possibly have wanted to start the race on slicks – the track was far too wet – Hamilton must have been hankering after a switch to wet weather tyres.
It’s impossible to know for sure whether that was a missed opportunity for Mercedes. Could Hamilton have pulled off the tactics used by some drivers in Monaco this year, running on full wets long enough before switching directly to slicks as the track dried? Or at least used the superior initial grip to pass Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez at the start, then draw far enough ahead to switch to intermediates and bank the lead?
Both scenarios have obvious drawbacks. It’s hard to imagine that on the hotter and more abrasive Singapore track the wets would have lasted long enough for drivers to go directly to slicks. And the theory of passing Leclerc and Perez is all well and good, but Hamilton would also have needed to pull far enough away from them to make a pit stop and emerge ahead – not easy given the early Safety Car disruption which tightened the pack up.
But for a team which is supposedly going all-out for wins at this stage in the season, it’s disappointing they played it safe. Perhaps if both cars had been at the front they would have been more inclined to gamble.
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They did gamble once George Russell’s race from the pit lane was ruined when he skidded off while trying to pass Valtteri Bottas. He was put on slicks tyres as early as lap 21, 12 laps before anyone else. But the hope of using him to inform his team mate’s strategy was ruined when Hamilton hit a barrier on lap 33, compromising his race.
The next lap Russell produced the quickest tour of the race and that triggered mass pit stops. Among the quickest to react was AlphaTauri, but they regretted the decision when Yuki Tsunoda crashed on his first lap on medium rubber.
With the Safety Car out again, the remaining drivers were able to pit, and those who’d…
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