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Wolff: "Communication between Hamilton and the team could be much better"
During the final phase of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Mercedes decided to pit Lewis Hamilton again, to go for the fastest race lap on the softest tyre. At the Mercedes pit wall, however, things did not go smoothly around the decision to let Hamilton stop. That's what Toto Wolff tells Motorsport.com.
"Our communication was not great around that," Wolff conceded. "In the morning we agreed that we wouldn't pit for the quickest lap, that it was bearing too much risk," explains Wolff. "The call to pit around Lap 60 to protect against the safety car certainly would have been the right call," Wolff said. but then the gap was never quite comfortable enough."
Learn a lot from communication
"But then the gap [between Verstappen] was never quite comfortable enough. It was a second or two, then 2.5, then we hit backmarker traffic," Wolff adds. The choice to bring in Hamilton on lap 66 came quickly. "Then obviously we communicated with Lewis, so at the end, it was a bit of confusion, and four laps to the end he pitted to score the fastest lap."
Wolff indicates that the team can learn a lot from the team's confusion in the pit lane. "I think there's a lot to learn from the intercom conversation that we had in the garage and the communication to the driver. [It was] certainly not 1A, but at the end, the result counts," Wolff concludes.