Mercedes manager Toto Wolff said that the team’s strategic choice cost Lewis Hamilton a possible victory in the United States Grand Prix – before the seven-time world champion was disqualified.
At the Circuit of the Americas, Hamilton trailed Max Verstappen by barely two seconds and was rapidly narrowing the distance in the final laps.
Mercedes initially had a track position advantage over Red Bull, but failed to respond to Verstappen’s undercut maneuver on the 17th lap.
The Mercedes team appeared to be unsure about committing to a one- or two-stop strategy, which ultimately resulted in a pit stop delay.
As a result, Hamilton re-entered the race six seconds adrift of Verstappen and struggled to close the gap until the latter stages of the race, when they made a switch to the medium tyres.
“Hindsight is a tough thing because you can see if we covered Max we had the quicker car at that stage but we didn’t know,” Wolff said in an interview with Sky Sports F1.
“Dragging out to a one-stop was reasonable at the time, but we lost so much time over two laps.” That is what caused the race to be lost.
“We were on Lap 19 or 20, and we needed to extend it until Lap 23 in order for the one-stop to stick.” He stops, Max stops, and we knew we only needed four more circuits to go with a one-stop. He was 20 seconds behind us when the tyre blew and we lost the gap.
“George was also abandoned in no man’s land. Simply frustrating. Everything worked against us. It was a tough battle with Ricciardo, who came out on the softs and did the fastest lap, and a feisty Norris. But that’s the way it is.”
According to FIA regulations, any car having a skid block with wear greater than 1mm will result in the driver’s disqualification.
“A physical floor and a plank wear inspection was carried out on car numbers 16 [Leclerc] and 44 [Hamilton],” according to a statement from the FIA.
“The skids are found not to be in compliance with Article 3.5.9e) of the Formula One Technical Regulations.”
The stewards deemed Hamilton and Leclerc in violation of the rules and opted to disqualify them from the race.
As a result, Lando Norris was promoted to second place, and Carlos Sainz was promoted to third, securing the final podium berth.
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