Mercedes strategy call that saved Hamilton's race

Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott has described the pivotal strategy decision that allowed Lewis Hamilton to salvage a strong result from the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Hamilton was relegated to last after the race restart following a strategic mistake that ensured he was the only driver to recommence on intermediate tyres.

The seven-time F1 champion surged back through the field from 15th before narrowly falling short of the top two positions on the road at the flag, although he was later promoted to second after Sebastian Vettel was disqualified.

Hamilton switched to what would be an effective two-stop strategy in order to use the full performance of the W12 but was caught behind Daniel Ricciardo and an ailing Max Verstappen before his first stop.

Mercedes pulled off a perfectly timed strategic call to pit early and undercut the two cars ahead and give Hamilton a chance of taking home solid points.

“Well, it is a really difficult track to overtake," said Elliott.

"When you've got the sort of same tyres at the same life, it's very difficult to have a pace advantage big enough to get by the car in front.

"So, although Lewis was able to get by a few of the slower cars earlier on, as he came on up to the back of Ricciardo we were really struggling.

"We waited to a point where we thought we had to undercut both, on Ricciardo and on Max, to see if we could get by both of them at the same time, and as it turned out, we were able to make that strategy work.

"From that point on we were on a two-stop strategy, where Lewis was able to drive aggressively all the way through the race and to maximise the performance in the car.”

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