Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff says the team thought about pitting Lewis Hamilton early in the Mexican Grand Prix after his first corner lock-up.
The British driver hit the brakes too late at the opening turn and cut the chicane, causing him to radio the team and report a vibration.
Wolff admitted the tyre issue was “scary” and Mercedes thought about pitting him, but that would’ve had an impact on Hamilton’s title chances.
“Maybe that race looked straightforward from the outside but it really wasn't from within the team,” he explained afterwards.
“It all began at Turn 1 when Lewis flat spotted his front right tyre under braking. That gave us a really tough call to make because we could see the vibrations getting worse and some of the peaks he was hitting were pretty scary.
“In any normal race we would have pitted him because of the risk of tyre failure or maybe worse but of course that stop would have cost him the championship.
“We had a lot of debate with the engineers, balancing the positive and negative aspects of the decision, and we were monitoring the numbers every single lap.
“But in the end, some of Lewis' bad luck this year got cancelled out by making it through this situation and we pulled him into the pits as early as we could to make the one-stop strategy work.
“From there, he was able to control his pace all the way to the end, in spite of some high exhaust temperatures that meant we were juggling with engine modes to look after everything properly.”
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