Vowles explains Hamilton tyre choice in Germany
F1 News
- GPblog.com
As Friday practice got cancelled at the Nurburgring, the teams had to determine their strategy on the data of a single free practice session last weekend. As a result, there was much less data that could be analysed. This became clear in qualifying, when Lewis Hamilton changed tyres at the last minute in Q2.
James Vowles explained in the Mercedes debrief what the team's choices were. "We saw in the only training session that the medium and the softs worked well. The hardest tyre wouldn't work well because of that. A one stoper from medium to hard therefore seemed impossible." According to Vowles, the choice to drive the mediums during qualification was a logical one.
So did Verstappen
"We still had two new sets of the medium left and otherwise we couldn't go out on new tyres every time. Normally we would start on that tyre and Lewis' time also indicated that he could continue with that tyre."
"In the end they went on the track with the softest tyre to eventually start on that tyre. We already saw which tyre they were going to qualify on in VT3 and that was certainly visible at Max Verstappen, who had already qualified on the softest tyre before. We did the same, because if Lewis would qualify on the mediums, he would have a clear disadvantage at the start and would probably fall back at the start. Then we should have hoped for other factors in the race that could help us," said Vowles.