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'Even without an extra pit stop Hamilton would have overtaken Verstappen, but...'
- GPblog.com
Max Verstappen had to lose out to Lewis Hamilton in Spain, who managed to eventually pass the Dutchman again via a two-stop strategy. The situation was not new for Verstappen, as the same thing happened in Hungary in 2019. Nevertheless, the two-stop strategy was a calculated risk for Hamilton, as Verstappen could have done it the exact opposite otherwise.
Fresher tyres from Lewis
In Mercedes' Race Debrief, Andrew Shovlin explains Mercedes' approach to pit stops and the thinking behind the second stop. "He actually said to us after the race: ’I was almost about to do it’[overtaking Verstappen]. Perhaps you should have left me out and I would have done it on track.' And it looked like it was quite possible, I think with fresher tires on Lewis’ car, it would probably happened at some point."
"Because Max would’ve started to get pretty significant degredation towards the end of the race. However, if we’ve done that, you then have the disadvantage almost of being the race leader and Max could have done to Lewis what we’ve done to him. So he could’ve converted to a two-stop as soon as Lewis had overtaken him."
"This might have happend around the point we decided to pull the trigger on the extra stop anyway. So in some ways, it was actually better to not do that overtake on track," Shovlin clearly explains the idea behind Hamilton's extra stop. Finally, he adds that if it didn't work, Hamilton would probably still finish second, limiting the damage anyway.
With that in mind, Mercedes decided to bring Hamilton in for the second time in order to start chasing Verstappen. With success, a few laps before the end they caught up with the Dutchman, who then also made an extra stop for new tyres to get the extra point for fastest lap.