Mercedes explain ‘clear mistake’ in race which left Hamilton ‘angry’ · RaceFans

Mercedes have explained why they chose to start Lewis Hamilton on a set of soft tyres in the Singapore Grand Prix, a decision the driver said made him “so angry”.

Hamilton said he tried to resist Mercedes’ push for him to start the race on a set of softs. He slipped from third to sixth place in the race after having to pit for hard tyres earlier than most of his rivals.

Mercedes technical director James Allison admitted they had got the call wrong, “We shouldn’t have started on the softs, that was a mistake,” he said in a video released by the team. “If we could turn back time, we would do what those around us did and select the mediums.”

He said the team was caught out because the pace at the front of the field was quicker than they expected. “The reasoning was that the soft tyre very often allows you to get away from the start abruptly and allows you a good chance of jumping a place or two in the opening laps of the race,” said Allison. “And we had no real expectation before the race that we were going to suffer the sorts of difficulties that we then experienced on the soft rubber.

“We imagined we would get the upside of the soft rubber of getting a place or two. We didn’t, because that just isn’t the way the starts played out.

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“Then we hoped that the downside of the soft being a bit more fragile wouldn’t really play out particularly badly because if you look back over the years in Singapore, on the whole, the pace starts very, very easy at the Singapore race and the drivers then build up the pace over many, many laps, leaving a soft tyre perfectly okay to run relatively deep into the pit window.

“So we didn’t get the places at the start, the pace started to build up from around about lap five. And that left Lewis with a car that was not particularly happy anyway, suffering from quite poor tyre degradation and needing to come in early as a consequence and really ruined his race for him. So just a clear mistake.”

Starting on soft tyres potentially gave Hamilton the advantage of being able to switch to the medium rubber later in the race. Allison said Mercedes considered this but it did not look like a superior call at any stage in the race.

“It was certainly there as a great weapon,” he said. “Had there been a Safety Car at an opportune moment in the race, that would have would have been one of the upsides of that strategy.

“But once embarked upon the…