Lewis Hamilton is right to take the blame for his Singapore strategy
Lewis Hamilton stayed out under the lap-39 virtual safety car in Singapore, slipped to sixth and lost a podium. He has taken full responsibility.
Lewis Hamilton skipped the virtual safety car stop in the Singapore Grand Prix and it cost him a podium. He's taken the blame for it, and rightly so.
Ferrari admit Hamilton lost a podium to a strategy failure that saw him slip back to sixth place. Hamilton himself took "full responsibility" for his strategy calls. That matters, because this was a stop he could have made and didn't.
The lap-39 window he left open
The virtual safety car (a neutralised spell where drivers must hold a set slower pace, which makes a pit stop cheaper than usual) was called on lap 39. Lance Stroll had pulled aside in his Aston Martin with a suspected clutch issue.
By then Hamilton had already done 21 laps on softs. A free-ish stop on old tyres is about as clear a chance as a race offers. According to The Race, he was told to pit and didn't. Looking at the onboard, The Race says, "he clearly made no attempt to enter the pits".
Why it became a talking point
The instruction to pit never reached viewers. The Race puts that down to "a weird Ferrari-Hamilton radio dead spot" that kept the call off the broadcast. Without it, the story after the race looked like a team getting it wrong.
Ferrari are, in The Race's words, "understandably peeved" that Hamilton's strategy became such a big post-race talking point "when it seemed internally clear the error was his, not the team's".
Could Ferrari have done more?
That's the fair question The Race asks. Could Ferrari have managed Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc better? Its verdict suggests yes: "Ferrari could have managed the split-strategy better." It also wonders whether Hamilton has "100% faith and trust in Ferrari's strategists".
The Race is clear the bigger picture includes "a pretty crushing Max Verstappen/Red Bull performance", and lists the might-have-beens: "Hamilton could have been on pole. Charles Leclerc could have led into the first corner." None of that happened.
Our view
The team's handling of two cars on different strategies is worth picking apart. But this particular stop was the one to take, and the call was his. He was told to come in, the window was there and he stayed out.
Wrong call. Owning it in public is the right response, and it's to his credit that he did so without dressing it up. Ferrari's wider strategy deserves scrutiny, but on lap 39 the decision sat with the driver, and he's said as much himself.
Sources
- Lewis Hamilton takes blame for poor Singapore GP strategy (opens in a new tab), Motorsport.com
- Hamilton takes blame for poor Singapore GP strategy call (opens in a new tab), Autosport
- Lewis Hamilton sent to FIA medical team after grueling Singapore Grand Prix (opens in a new tab), Motorsport.com
- Our verdict on Hamilton's Singapore strategy failure (opens in a new tab), The Race
