Mercedes strategy of the Race - Monaco

[Nitrodaze]

"We told him to stay out." said Wolff .
To which he replied "not good" , referring to his tires being old and cold .

So , yeah , you could say he was asking to pit .

They made the decision based on the FACT that the driver wanted to pit , and that there was time to do it if the stop had gone as planned .

As it happened , Lewis was partly to blame there as well , as he didn't hit his marks right on , but went slightly deep , causing a small time loss on it's own .



Look , the decision to stop looks a whole lot dumber from here in the future .

They thought they still had time to do it and they had a very nervous driver . It's really as simple as that .
The guys behind both spoke of how nervous they were about the restart as well , on icy tires that were well worn and would not be easy to heat up as a result .

Sure , it was a team decision , but , as he stated , he is part of that team .

I am not sure which race you were watching. But the 2015 Monaco race we are talking about, the team should take the blame for this one. They are the ones who are suppose to have a clear head to make a thorough risk analysis and make the best decision for the benefit of the team and the driver or at least strongly point out the risks of pitting to the driver. Otherwise, there is no need for the pit wall crew.
The main problem here is, there was lack of evidence of good appreciation of the risk. Hence none was communicated to the driver. With Nico between Vettel and Hamilton, he was not a real threat. Nico on fresh tyres was not a threat. The clever engineers on the Nico side of the garage were not dumb to consider pitting because they could see that there was a major disadvantage to do so.
The real question is, what is the safest time buffer to make a pit stop. If the entire time to make a pit stop is 25 seconds, to cover all eventualities of driver over shooting the box, pit crew eff up and wheel gun jams, would half a second do it? The Vesterpen scenario required 5 sec. With such a high stake as was the case for Hamilton, would one say 3 to 5 seconds to spare for one to make a call to pit under the Monaco circumstances. The lack of 2.5 seconds was what cost Hamilton the race.

The error to pit early at Malaysia gave Vettel an untroubled victory as the Mercedes cars were too far back to mount a challenge. Adding the Monaco saga, one could say a pattern is beginning to emerge at Mercedes. Hence, the title may not be such a done deal as Ferrari and Red Bull can smell blood. This pattern which l call the "Brawn effect" is likely to bring ferrari and possibly Wiiliams (if they can get their act together) closer to mercedes as we draw to the close of the season. Having the faster car is not an automatic guarantee of winning the championship. It would most likely be a great spectacle if this were to transpire, don't you think? Keep effing up merc, you are spicing up the season :-).