Hamilton was frustrated after Mercedes pitted him eight laps to go at Istanbul Park.
Hamilton had hoped to finish the entire race on a single set of intermediate tires after not pitting when the immediate cars remained around him for about 20 laps.
Mercedes stated after the race that it wanted to reduce its losses by catching up with Hamilton as it feared it would have suffered significant deterioration in the closing stages.
Alpine’s Esteban Ocon was the only driver who drove the entire race without a pit stop, but lost 18 seconds to Lance Stroll in the last five laps and was lucky enough to hold onto one point.
Mercedes track engineer Andrew Shovlin said the team’s calculations showed that Hamilton could have finished fourth without a pit stop – but only if he stopped deteriorating, which was unlikely.
“If they had stabilized at the point where we introduced him and they stayed absolutely constant there until the end, we think he would have lost the place to Sergio [Perez]but he would have stayed before Charles [Leclerc] who finished fourth, ”Shovlin said on the latest episode of This Week with Will Buxton on Motorsport TV.
“But this scenario means there is no more deterioration and it’s pretty clear that the tires have fallen off.
“The calculation that we could only do after the race was the deterioration that we could see with Esteban. He was the only one who ran a set of Inters to the finish.
“If we superimpose this degradation on Lewis, you could see that he actually loses a lot of places and almost falls back into the points. Because of this humiliation, he could even have quarreled with him [Carlos] Sainz at the very end.
“This is a calculation that you cannot do live because you will be dependent on information in the future.”
Hamilton was pitted to make sure he made it back on track in fifth. Mercedes feared he would have lost a seat to Pierre Gasly and would have fallen back to sixth if he had stayed out longer.
Shovlin stated that, at best, the team felt it was best to “cut our losses” because at best, he would lose the podium anyway.
“It becomes a bit of a player’s dilemma when you know you haven’t done your best at this point, but how do you get the most out of the rest of the race?” Said Shovlin. “It began to look like it was going to stop for another set, even if you had to go through the graining, it would be the top-ranked finish and the safest thing.”
Mercedes initially gave Hamilton the call to the pits soon after Perez walked in, only to have the seven-time world champion ask him to stay outside.
Shovlin said the Mercedes pit wall was “everything on board” to stay out longer and “take some risks,” and trusted Hamilton’s decision under the difficult conditions.
“The driver is one of the best who knows how the tires feel and what the grip is,” said Shovlin. “You have this feeling through all your many, many years of experience of how far you can take this. That is why we listen to Lewis at many of these stages.
“But it’s so difficult to get everything right in these races. It was only part of our decision to get back into a position to fight for victory, back into a position to fight on a podium.
“In the last third of the race that drove a bit of risk-taking, calculated risk-taking.”
