Not pitting Hamilton at the F1 restart in Hungary was a mistake

In extraordinary scenes, Hamilton was the only car left on the grid when the other 13 drivers pulled into the pits behind him to switch from intermediate to slick tires for the standing restart after an early red flag in last Sunday’s race in Hungary .

Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff initially insisted that he considered it “100% the right decision” for Hamilton to take the standing restart and not pit for slicks.

But in the Mercedes debriefing video, technical director Mike Elliott admitted that “with hindsight we clearly made the wrong choice.”

“You have to remember that these decisions are really, really tricky,” said Elliott.

“Right at the beginning of the race, we had to worry about which tire to fit, as it turned out that the Inter was definitely the right choice as it started to rain on the opening lap.

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“We struggled after the red flag about which tires to fit, and obviously all the cars were equipped with INTERS. And on this lap before the grid, even though all drivers had Intersen built in, others clearly decided to change their minds and we should too.

“But the reality is that it is actually more difficult for us as a team than for the other teams. When you’re in the front car, you can’t see what everyone else is doing. You are the leading car.

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“If you are further down the chain, you can see what others have done and you can change your mind accordingly. You can use this new evidence to your advantage. “

Another dilemma for Mercedes was the prospect that Hamilton could have lost ground in the pit lane due to the positioning of the reigning world champion’s pit box, which is closest to the pit entrance.

Mercedes was also concerned about getting involved in a possible pit lane collision, as seen by Haas rookie Nikita Mazepin and Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen.

“The second problem for us is that we have the first pit lane in the pit lane,” explained Elliott. “So when we got into the pit lane and boxed, all the cars would have poured by and it would have been very difficult for Lewis to get out and that would have delayed us.

“The second problem with this is that if we tried to force ourselves into the pit lane, we could collide with another car, and we actually saw that with this series of pit stops.

“We asked ourselves what is the best strategy for us? And actually we thought we wanted to be conservative with that. Our main competitor was further back and what we had to do was not make a stupid mistake and end up colliding with another car.

“Coincidentally, we would have been better off going to the pits, even if we had to wait at the very back of the queue.”

Mercedes thinks Hamilton would have dropped to around sixth if he’d pitted with the other 13 cars.

“It’s pretty hard to know because it really comes down to finding a gap in the pit lane to get out of the pit,” said Elliot.

“We think P5, P6, maybe something like that. But, as I said, it was probably really the greater risk for us to collide in the pit lane with another car that was trying to force us out, and we should have been conservative. “

After dropping to 14th place at the end of the first lap of the race when he came into play for slicks, Hamilton eventually recovered to third place.

The seven-time world champion was promoted to second place behind Esteban Ocon after Sebastian Vettel was disqualified due to a fuel violation after the race.