F1 News
Wolff defends strategy call that upset Hamilton at Spa
George Russell was the first driver to take the chequered flag in Belgium. Howver, after his disqualification, Lewis Hamilton claimed his 105th victory. If Hamilton had attempted a one-stop strategy like his teammate, could he have won on track? Wolff explains the reasons for why Hamilton didn't.
Wolff: 'Nobody had it on their radar'
Hamilton was asked after the race whether he had considered a one-stop like his team-mate, Russell. "If you listen, you could have heard what I said to the team most of the time. But yeah, I think the tyres were pretty good. I still had plenty of tyres and I was going quicker. I didn't want to stop."
When this was put to Toto Wolff in the paddock by Gpblog and others, this was the Austrian's response.
"It's okay, but as a driver, you don't have the full picture," Wolff began; "He said his tyres are good. But at that stage, nobody had a one-stop on the radar. We had to cover the two cars behind. It was Leclerc and Piastri. And you can see that everybody else went on the two-stop, logically. It just wasn't on the radar.
"So what we did with Lewis was absolutely the right thing to do. It [Russell's one-stop] couldn't have been anticipated, because if it would have been, any of the other top teams would have done it," the team principal concluded.