Mercedes are convinced they made the right decision to pit George Russell during an early Safety Car period in Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, despite losing the advantage he gained when the race was red-flagged shortly afterwards.
Russell surrendered the lead of the race when he came into the pits on lap seven when the Safety Car was deployed in reaction to Alexander Albon crashing out of the race. The team’s chief technical officer James Allison said the incident occured “right on the cusp of whether a Safety Car stop is going to help you out or leave you a little bit worse off.”
The team decided to bring Russell in from the lead and fit a set of hard tyres to run to the end of the race. Lewis Hamilton, who had been second behind his team mate, stayed out and moved into the lead.
“We brought George in but left Lewis out because at that point it’s very finely balanced whether you’re going to get a benefit from the stop or not,” Allison explained in a video released by the team. “And by bringing one in and not the other, then you’re sort of splitting your risk. It’s like an each-way bet.”
Russell fell to seventh place as a result of his pit stop but was set to run until the end of the race without pitting again. However that advantage was neutered when the race was red-flagged, allowing the rest of the field to change tyres with no time loss.
Allison believes the team made the right decision by “getting the best out of a cheap pit stop under the Safety Car”, despite the subsequent race stoppage. The race director’s decision to red-flag the race for the single-car incident was widely questioned.
“All that was rendered completely null and void when the red flag was then pulled out just a few seconds later,” said Allison. “Now, we were very surprised by that red flag because to us, that looked like the sort of incident that could have been cleared up under a yellow.
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“The moment that it goes red then, although you’ve got a cheap stop under a Safety Car, it’s nothing like as good as the free stop you get under a red flag. So I think the decision stands on the merits that we were considering when we made it. But obviously, once the red flag came out, then it clearly meant that George lost out a little bit.”
Soon after the race restarted a power unit failure ended Russell’s race. He had already recovered to fourth place by then and Allison believes he was set for a strong…
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