Any improvements for Mercedes at Le Castellet?
After two difficult races for the Brackley team, Toto Wolff hopes to bounce back at the Paul Ricard circuit, where Mercedes has achieved 2 victories in 2018 and 2019.
Following the French Grand Prix, Mercedes’ executive director, Toto Wolff, confessed that his team had mismanaged its strategy compared to Red Bull’s. Thanks to a two-stop race strategy, Max Verstappen managed to win by overtaking Lewis Hamilton (who only made one stop) on the penultimate lap.
The battle between the three cars (Verstappen, Hamilton, Bottas) was intense at the front and then we had to choose a one or two-stop strategy. Two stops were a danger for us because (Sergio) Perez was there. We got it wrong, declared Toto Wolff.
At the end of the Grand Prix, Valtteri Bottas, struggling with his tires, is overtaken by Sergio Perez. However, the Finn did not pit to change tires to attempt the fastest lap. The Mercedes team principal later admitted that he did not call in his driver because he thought the Mexican would receive a penalty for flirting with the track limits during the overtake.
« We thought Perez would receive a penalty for going off track, so we told him to stay within five seconds, so it was really a balance between this penalty and maybe getting the best lap. We played, we lost, he explained.
This choice did not please Valtteri Bottas, who had told his team that a two-stop race was the best. After Monaco, Mercedes once again lost valuable points in the World Championship due to poor strategies.
We lost the pit stop race. Thinking we had enough margin against the undercut. We had a solid three-second gap to protect ourselves against the undercut and it wasn’t enough, and from there, we were on the defensive.
We have a lot to learn, we need to understand because they (Red Bull) have done phenomenal moves, why did we misjudge the undercut? That is one of the points we need to examine, concluded Toto Wolff.
