Mercedes reveals cause of Hamilton's undercut by Verstappen

The team explains the events that cost Hamilton the lead at French GP

Ewan Gale

Wednesday 23 June 2021 18:27

Mercedes has revealed how Lewis Hamilton lost his sizeable margin to Max Verstappen during the pit stop phase of the French Grand Prix last weekend.

Hamilton had taken the lead at turn one as his F1 championship rival slid wide and despite opening up a three-second lead over the Red Bull driver, Verstappen was able to undercut him by pitting a lap sooner.

In the aftermath, Mercedes had pointed blame at its computer simulations after apparently being led to believe the gap would be enough to stave off Verstappen's advances.

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Asked why Hamilton wasn't called in for his pit stop a lap earlier, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin replied: "Well, with hindsight we would have done that.

"The reality was that we had 3.2 seconds of clear air between Lewis and Max and that we thought was enough to protect against the undercut.

"Now, how did Max actually get out in front? Well, there is a couple of areas where we lost a bit of time. However, it wasn’t the pit stop, the pit stops themselves were very good.

"There was a bit that we lost at the back end of the lap and coming into the box with Lewis obviously on older tyres, we also had a bit of wheelspin leaving the pit box itself which cost a little bit.

"But ultimately the issue was that in our tools, the amount of time we thought we needed to protect against the undercut was insufficient and we’ll make sure that we can get that corrected in the future but as I said, with hindsight, we would have done that.

"That would have allowed Max to go and offset and be on a more similar strategy to Perez so he could have still presented a risk end of race, but what we wouldn’t have done was given up the lead of the race.”

Mercedes grateful for short turnaround ahead of Styrian Grand Prix

France marked the start of the first triple-header of the season with the Styrian Grand Prix being held this weekend.

Despite having a short amount of time to solve any issues, Shovlin revealed the team is excited that the next race follows so soon after the previous event.

"I think the main thing is that we’re desperate to get back on track and hopefully win the race.

"We are all quite grateful that we’ve only got a couple of days to wait to get back onto the circuit and in terms of the data, we’ve actually got some pretty good data and some good understanding from the last race.

"We’ve also got the simulator where we can do a lot of good work preparing for Austria and that is going to be going on in the next day or two, but ultimately it is the same for all the teams.

"If we had an extra week, we would make use of it, but it is actually quite fun when you have them coming so thick and fast, it puts a lot of pressure on people but it does keep it exciting.

"So, we are going to be busy for the next couple of days, but hopefully, we can arrive in Austria in a good and well-prepared state.”