Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has admitted the team made a strategic blunder with the pitstop timing that cost George Russell a podium in Formula 1‘s Qatar Grand Prix.
Russell lined up in pole position, but he dropped back three places to come home in an eventual fourth place as Mercedes’ earlier weekend promise didn’t materialise.
The Briton lost out to both Max Verstappen and Lando Norris at Turn 1 at the start and he was unable to maintain pace with the two leaders through the opening stint.
Russell was starting to encounter pressure from McLaren’s Oscar Piastri when Mercedes elected to guard against a possible undercut threat with a pitstop on Lap 23.
However, a seven-second stop dropped Russell right back into the pack behind Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, who he was unable to clear over the succeeding laps.
Russell’s woe was compounded as negative degradation on a cool night at the Lusail International Circuit nullified the usual advantage a driver gains from fresh tyres.
Wolff, though, has revealed that the desire to address the chronic understeer that Mercedes experienced in the race on both cars inspired the choice to pit when it did.
“This started to go really south after 15 or so laps when we realised that the car balanced itself out,” Wolff told media including Motorsport Week post-race.
“The understeer crept in and we started to lose real ground to the guys driving in front of us and to Piastri behind us that we felt going on the other tyre and adjusting the front flap on the wing would give us an even happier situation. Which it did not always.
“First of all, that pit stop wasn’t great. We came out behind a long zone of traffic that held us up for many laps.
“So, kind of one triggered the other. Overall nothing positive in that.”
Mercedes didn’t have pace to win in Qatar
Russell had been tipped to replicate his race win at the previous round in Las Vegas from pole based on the encouraging pace Mercedes had shown in the Sprint race.
Wolff attributed the “terrible” understeer that hampered Mercedes to its W15 becoming “a handful” once a track grips up, which wasn’t the case earlier in the weekend.
Asked whether Russell could have triumphed had he maintained the lead at the start, Wolff responded: “No, I don’t think so.
“I think yesterday if the Grand Prix had happened yesterday that was a winnable race.
“But, in sheer pace, I think we would have been behind Lando and we would have been behind Max. So a solid podium, but too much went wrong.”
READ MORE – George Russell was ‘expecting a crash’ with fired up Max Verstappen in Qatar
