Mercedes reveal fine line between Hamilton making history and being an also ran

Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott has explained the fine strategy lines that can determine whether a race or qualifying will be a success or a failure.

The reigning F1 champions were on both sides of that line across the Russian Grand Prix weekend in Sochi as the low of Saturday's qualifying was followed by the high of Sunday's race result that led to Lewis Hamilton scoring his 100th grand prix victory.

In qualifying, the switch from intermediate tyres to slicks caught out Mercedes, which resulted in Hamilton and team-mate Valtteri Bottas lining up fourth and seventh after the Finn had spearheaded one-twos in Friday practice to underline their pace.

In the race, however, the call at the right time to change from slicks to inters was the key to Hamilton landing his historic win and Bottas going from nowhere to fifth by the chequered flag.

With regard to qualifying, Elliott said: “It is actually really, really tricky in those situations to know what we should do.

"The strategists are looking at the delta times to try and work out whether we are at a crossover between the intermediates and the slicks.

"We are listening to the driver information, we are looking at the weather forecast, we are trying to take in all that information and decide what we should do.

"When you look at what happened in Q3 we were right on the borderline and it was a really tricky call.

"And actually the problem for us was that we were on the wrong bit of the track at the wrong bit of time, so others were able to make that decision, come in and get two clear laps on the slicks.

"For us, by the time we made the decision we only ended up with the one lap and the consequences of that were clear.

"It is clear that in hindsight what we needed to do was a prep lap to get the best out of the tyres for the fast lap that was needed.”

Mercedes' weather radar technician proved decisive for Hamilton

The qualifying result severely compromised Mercedes' race plan that was further hindered by Hamilton getting boxed on the run to the first braking point, while Bottas had taken an engine penalty that saw him start 16th.

For Hamilton, in particular, it came down to Mercedes calling him in a lap earlier than the race leader at the time in McLaren's Lando Norris.

Explaining the strategy call on that occasion, Elliott added: "With Lewis, we knew we were in second in the race and we knew if we got that wrong we could fall right back down in the field. So it is a much more challenging call.

"But the strategists are looking at lots of different bits of information. They are looking at the timing from each sector and trying to work out 'Are we going to transition between slicks and intermediates?'

"They get the information fed into them about the weather from the weather radar and they are also listening to the driver feedbacks and the drivers telling them how they feel the circuit is like.

"So that position, we got a half-dry circuit, a half wet circuit. It is a really difficult call to make, probably one of the most difficult things for the strategists to do.

"And the bit that really made the difference for us was the weather radar and the person that was looking at the weather radar made a very clear call.

"What they said is they expected more rain before the end of the race, the track was actually going to get wetter and that's what tipped the balance to the decision of pitting for the Intermediates.”

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