Originally Posted by allthingsuk:
“Do you all think Hamilton should have 3 stopped? His tyres were in such poor condition that he would have been mugged easily by Webber and Schumacher.”
In the last few laps?
No, probably not.
I know it's not really in Hamilton's nature but I think what he needs to do, at some point, is simply drive the car within it's limits,allow other cars to take positions off him and then use that performance to demonstrate to the team how things (whether it might be tyres, aero, mechanical grip etc) are compromising his race.
I said earlier that I thought, maybe, McLaren were planning on one-stopping and by going slowly Hamilton was, effectively, forcing Vettel to try and pull out a 20 second lead so he could manage the "extra" pitstop without losing position.
Obviously, as it turned out, this wasn't the case at all and, as usual, McLaren had no clever strategy and they were just relying on their drivers to magically go faster but also make their tyres last sufficiently.
This is something the McLaren race team have a history of doing.
They did it with Prost, Senna, Hakkinen and now they're doing it with Hamilton.
They are, basically, at best incredibly conservative with race strategy and at worst they're downright incompetent... and then they just rely on having a superb driver to pull it all back into shape for them.
And with these tyres you simply can't ask a driver to put in a whole series of "quali' laps" to recover after a screw-up cos all that'll happen is that they'll catch up but then fall away again before the next pitstop.
As Horner is so fond of saying; "Plan the race then race the plan".
With hindsight, Maybe if McLaren looked at all the times during that race where Hamilton was driving cautiously to preserve his tyres and make it to the next pitstop window, putting in 1:45s and 1:46s rather than 1:43s and 1:42s, they'd decide that they SHOULD have opted for a 3 stop strategy right from the start in order to let Lewis thrash the tits off the car for more of the race.
Trouble with that, of course, is it means Hamilton having to put his trust in the chrome-hatted oompa-loompas more often each race.
*EDIT*
After reading that back you have to wonder why anybody would actually stay with McLaren if it's the case but the fact is that the factory DOES keep on making brilliant(ish) cars.
It's just that the race team rarely seems to do anything which actually adds to the overall package.
I imagine that if Ross Brawn ever found himself working for the McLaren race team he'd be absolutely stunned at the lack of initiative and inventiveness he found there.