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      08-24-2014, 10:57 PM   #94
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Why Mercedes didn’t retire Hamilton sooner

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2014/08/2...-fastest-laps/

Quote:
The records will show Mercedes took pole position at Spa-Francorchamps this year with over two seconds in hand over their closest rivals, and in the race Nico Rosberg’s fastest lap was almost two seconds quicker than anyone else – yet they still lost the race.

That’s remarkable enough in its own right, and the top staff at Mercedes are rightly furious that an unnecessary collision between their drivers cost what should have been another one-two finish.

The scale of Mercedes’ advantage gives some insight into another of the interesting storylines of the race – Lewis Hamilton’s eagerness to retire his wounded W05 while the team wanted him to stay out.

Hamilton incurred considerable damage to the floor of his car while driving back to the pits with a puncture, and after he rejoined the track the car was clearly not handling to his liking. But despite those problems Hamilton’s car was still quick – indeed, he took 2.7 seconds out of his race-leading team mate between laps three and eight.

Nonetheless in a series of radio messages to his team Hamilton made it clear he wanted to retire the car. “I’ve got nothing, guys,” he said shortly before his second pit stop, “the rear end is so bad”.

Hamilton, of course, is used to having a much quicker car underneath him than almost every other driver in the field. His badly wounded car was, in the early stages of the race, still better than what many of his rivals get to drive on a good day.

Afterwards Hamilton estimated the damage had cost him “at least 50, 40 points [of downforce]“. He told reporters: “I could do nothing, I was driving the arse off the car and the thing was all over the place and I couldn’t catch Romain Grosjean.”

Hamilton’s comments reflect the condition his car was in by the time he retired. But to begin with he was regularly over a second per lap faster than Grosjean, as the date below shows. He overtook the Lotus on lap 23.

However Hamilton’s car was getting worse. “The condition of the car deteriorated further as the race continued,” explained Mercedes’ executive direcotr for technical, Paddy Lowe.

It became increasingly clear to Mercedes that his only realistic chance of scoring points was if the Safety Car came out. This was not an unreasonable gamble to take – the Safety Car had appeared in four of the last five races at Spa-Francorchamps.

But even if the Safety Car had appeared, Hamilton wasn’t convinced it would help him. “It doesn’t even matter if the Safety Car came out,” he said afterwards, “I wouldn’t be able to pass the car in front. [Adrian] Sutil was pulling away from me.”

Hamilton was faster than Sutil until around the middle part of the race. But his car was getting slower, and soon the Sauber ahead of him was getting smaller instead of larger – which was due in part to Sutil being on the soft tyres. However after Hamilton’s final pit stop it became clear the tipping point had been reached, and Mercedes finally retired his car.

Up until that point, Hamilton had usually been quick enough that the potential appearance of the Safety Car could have helped him take at least one point. As his race engineer Peter Bonnington pointed out during the race, had they retired his car early and then seen the Safety Car come out, “we’d be kicking ourselves”.
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