Ferrari Formula 1 team principal Fred Vasseur says Lewis Hamilton would have won the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix without the virtual safety car, such was the Briton’s pace on his three-stop strategy.
With the expectation of high tyre degradation, Ferrari committed to the three-stopper early with Hamilton and opened with its first pit stop at the end of his 11th tour to trade his soft tyres for the hards.
This pulled Mercedes into responding despite the Silver Arrows sticking to a two-stop strategy, hastening its switch to the hard tyre. Hamilton was just over two seconds adrift from early leader George Russell before making his second stop, this time moving onto the medium at the end of lap 27.
It was on the C3 tyre that Hamilton demonstrated a searing turn of pace, tearing chunks off the gap between him and the Mercedes – and he had got to within five seconds over just nine laps before Russell pitted for a second time.
Once both Mercedes drivers were clear, Hamilton was now 16 seconds up the road with one final stop to complete, but his shift on the medium-tyre was truncated when Fernando Alonso pulled off the road at Turn 9 with a battery problem. Ferrari used the VSC to pit Hamilton, who stayed ahead of Russell and pulled away into an unassailable lead.
Vasseur was asked if Hamilton could have repeated the feat without the VSC, where he would have needed to pass at least one of the two Mercedes drivers on-track – and responded that while the final 19.5-second gap might have been smaller, the seven-time champion would still have managed it.
“We would have won the race, perhaps with a bit less,” the Frenchman confirmed.
“But we were also in a good situation with a fresh set of tyres at this stage. It was positive for us, but I don’t want to do the calculation what would have been in the race with this or this. But I think we were already in a very good situation.”
Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Although Russell was gaining on Hamilton in the three laps between his second stop and the VSC, the gap had only come down by 1.5s – suggesting that Hamilton could have preserved the bulk of his lead and once more scythed away the Mercedes’ advantage
There is the consideration that Hamilton would have lost time in dirty air trying to pass the Mercedes duo, but Russell’s lack of pace on the hards – even in clean air – might have been the deciding factor in compressing the gap at the front.
“Lewis was the quickest of us afterwards,” Mercedes’ boss Toto Wolff noted. “So, even if we would have come out in front of him, it would have been very tricky to hold him behind.”
Wolff also suggested that Mercedes might need to “re-calibrate” how it allows its two drivers to battle each other without losing too much time. The close-run duel between Russell and Kimi Antonelli allowed Hamilton to catch the pair, and then stay well clear of them either side of their final stops.
“There is a third party now getting involved in the championship fight, constructor and driver,” he added.
“And in that respect, we discussed internally with the two drivers how we want to handle the situation where we risk of holding each other up. And I think it’s not going to be a problem. It’s just maybe we need to re-calibrate.”
Photos from Barcelona-Catalunya GP – Sunday
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– The Autosport.com Team
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