2024 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[mendis]

As an aside, comparing the pace of both Mercedes cars on the Hards is an interesting errand. I'm just guessing, but perhaps one of them had to overtake some cars? But it's interesting that 'George fans' apparently expect their driver to be slower in clean air than the washed up pensioner is in dirty. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worthy of comment.

Russell spent most of his first stint behind Ham, but also ran a good long stint by keeping those mediums alive when Ham pitted. Ham complained of tyres after a bunch of laps on hards, whereas Russell managed to keep a charging Leclerc behind, who had far better pace. That's the standout race pace difference between the two Merc drivers. Ham's pace on a few laps old hards was just about the same as Russell who was on mediums in his first stint.

People are discounting Russell's ability to manage his race pace. He has vastly improved on that front, while keeping his qualifying speed.

Is there no reason you could see why a driver who knows hes pitted way too early onto a tyre expecred to go to the end of the race would maybe have an overall lower lap delta vs a driver who goes onto those tyres 11 laps later and therefore has 11 laps less wear to manage till the end of the race?

Isnt it obvious?

Data to ponder upon who was pushing and who wasn't.
Russell was managing his tyres in his second stint and that's why his times were very consistent till the end.
Ham started easy on his second stint, then started pushing. Then his tyres fell away.
Russell's fastest lap was on 30th lap (3rd lap of second stint).
Ham's came on 43rd lap (26th lap of second stint).
Going by that, if Russell would have pushed in his second stint, he would have lost the ability to hold up Leclerc to the end. But if he did push, then the delta to Ham would have been bigger in the beginning of his stint. It just shows how well Russell managed his stint. Remember, just like Ham had cars in front of him in second stint, Russell had Ham in front of him in the first stint and yet, managed a consistent stint throughout.

[mendis]

At this point in his career and with the current state of affairs at Mercedes, Ham has lost his desire and consequently patience to think through and execute a good race. He only wakes up if the car is capable of winning, anything lesser doesn't matter. That's perfectly ok for someone that has achieved everything in F1 and only thing that motivates him is the opportunity to win. But to take his washed out qualifying (other than singapore) and race performaces and justify there were other reasons why he didn't perform and blame everything under the sun, is a moot point. He has had off weekends in his prime even when he had a car to win. So dropping shoulders when the car isn't to his liking, isn't out of ordinary.

[DGP123]

At this point in his career and with the current state of affairs at Mercedes, Ham has lost his desire and consequently patience to think through and execute a good race.

Apart from his entire mid season, whereby he showed plenty of desire, banked two wins, 4th in Canada/Austria and two more podiums in Spain & Hungary. I think those results show he can execute good races.

More nonsense.

[ismail1991]

Hamilton didnt have a good race but it was deemed to be bad when we all saw he was on softs at the start. That`s why, I dont blame him for the bad performance today. If he had mediums and pitted around the same lap with Russel and still finished behind Russell, then I could say that his performance was bad

[SiLo]

Baffling strategy from Mercedes to be honest. Gamble with Medium and Hard across both, rather than the soft that clearly wasn't really going to last long enough considering the number of medium shod drivers behind them.