Mercedes have explained why it took so long to turn Lewis Hamilton’s car around during his disastrous pitstop on Lap 29 in Germany.
Everything had been going rather swimmingly for Lewis Hamilton over the first half of the German Grand Prix. Leading from pole position, a change from Intermediate to Soft tyres on Lap 28 looked like perfect timing as the weather seemed to be easing off and leading to a dry portion of the race. However, Charles Leclerc crashed his Ferrari in the stadium section just after changing to the slick tyres and, moments later, Hamilton joined his rival in the gravel.
While Leclerc’s accident proved terminal to his race, Hamilton’s slide into the gravel and resultant tap of the barriers wasn’t, as he managed to maintain some forward momentum to make the contact lighter than Leclerc managed. Hamilton scrabbled across the track and dived into the pits for repairs and a fresh set of Intermediates.
The pitstop didn’t go well for Mercedes. In fact, it took 53 seconds as the team had to lift up his car to change the front wing before addressing his change of tyres. This proved to cause a significant delay as the team didn’t appear to have tyres ready for him.
Explaining the circumstances of that pitstop on Merc’s Pure Pitwall debrief, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovelin said: “There was a lot of chaos when Lewis came in, but we were in the pits ready for Valtteri.”
“He [Valtteri] decided to stay out. At the same time, Lewis had gone off track, hit the wall, broke the front wing and so he came in.
“We could see that he was coming in, but it takes the guys a little while to get the different tyres out. But, also, we had this broken nose and we can’t lift the car to do the normal change with the jack. So, we had to get different kit out to do that.”
With the rules meaning sets of tyres are driver specific, Shovelin said Mercedes actually did a good job to ensure that Hamilton was put on a set of tyres that were his so quickly, considering the pitcrew had been queued up for Bottas: “It looked messy. There was a change of driver on the tyre call, we also changed the tyre spec from a soft to an intermediate tyre and getting the communication through to the guys when everything is so chaotic is very difficult.”
“We are aware it wasn’t pretty, the guys in the pits actually did a really good job reacting to that, we at least got the right tyres on the right car.
“But those situations are very difficult, and they are not rehearsed, they are not the ones we practice. But it does show us where we need to be stronger in the future.”
Hamilton would go on to finish in P11 on track after a time penalty and a later spin, but would be promoted to P9 due to time penalties given to the two Alfa Romeo drivers.
