Mac Merc Hamilton French Strategy

[kmsport]

Is it just me...or was the above mentioned strategy strange?
I couldn't work it out....3 stops?
Poor bloke had no chance.

[flor]

i remember ferrari winning there with 4 stops

[Inigo Montoya]

They didn't have the pace to keep up with the Ferraris regardless.

[Mr V]

What with Magny-Cours being the shortest pitlane on the calendar, i can see why McLaren went for it, don't forget, Michael won there with 4 stops in 2004!

That said, when he came in for his second stop, McLaren should have realised that an extra stop wasn't going to benefit them and reverted back to a 2 stopper.

[Knowlesy]

Michael did win with four stops, however he had a car good enough to do that.

Lewis did not, so the gamble was odd. He was clearly never going to pressure the Ferrari's so why risk stopping again? Anything can happen in the pits.

[Dutton]

I can see why. Come race day, you just have to presume your pitstops will work out properly (there is inherent risk, but acceptance of that is inherent in action) when thinking of strategy. On-the-hop decisions can still be made, of course.

Given this, Mclaren would know if they mirrored the Ferraris then they would finish 3rd; they also knew that an extra stop would not lose them a position. This way, it cannot hurt to give a punt. At worst you are no better off, but, you never know, it just might work out.

[Red]

Good grief mates. Lewis didn't have the worst car on the grid and he didn't do four stops either.

No idea if two or three stops would have made any differences today. My guess is that they gambled on a rain which never came.

[BootsOntheSide]

They didn't lose anything from it, but it was a strange strategy. The thread of rain probably explains it, but they didn't stand to gain all that much.

[Gt_R]

If they had run a 2 stopper, Lewis would have qualified behind the Ferraris, which meant little opportunities to beat them.

They took 3, and i believe many thought the Ferrari would at least run someone on a 3 stopper, but the Mclarens are fuelled too light to make a switch of strategy easy, especially when doing long stints on a soft compound in the last stint may not be wise.

And the rain factor...

[courageous]

They knew intermitent rain was forcast & the more stops you plan to make the less unscheduled stops for rain tyres you need.
There was a clear ranking on pace of Ferrari-McLaren-The rest, so Hamilton would neither win on pace nor lose by taking an extra stop.

Good call, didn't hurt but could have stolen a win.

[strider]

To be honest, I think they messed up quite badly.

They pulled Lewis in for a stop just after the Ferraris had lost some time making their their way through traffic and Lewis was catching them, the idea being to save Lewis the possibility of losing time as well. The flaw in that argument is that he lost a lot more time by making an extra stop.

As for Alonso, it must have been incredibly frustrating to do all that hard work and then find after each pit stop that he was back where he started. If you look at his weekend McLaren didn't do a great job for him. On Friday he returned to the garage after completing his out-lap in the second practice session, I think, where the team discovered a faulty brake sensor, which required the entire system to be replaced. The repairs took 55 minutes, leaving the poor guy just enough time to complete four laps.

Then came the gearbox failure in qualifying followed by today's frustration. He didn't have to worry much about Lewis Hamilton this weekend, it was everything else.