In summary: Mercedes technical director James Allison said the team originally decided not to face Lewis Hamilton in an attempt to set the fastest lap at the end of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
What they say
Allison said that before the race began, Mercedes did not intend to make an additional pit stop to pursue the fastest lap bonus point.
It was something that evolved a bit. At one point, we were thinking we had a very comfortable free stop with Lewis and we could take that as an opportunity to put fresh rubber on him without a threat behind with maybe 10, 11 laps to go or even a little earlier because that would mean that if if there was some kind of Safety Car we would be on thick tires that would easily reset on the track. It just felt like a good way to isolate Lewis from any of the punches that can knock down a leader.
But once we started talking about it and we proposed the idea to Lewis and one or two laps passed, it ended up being a number of laps short enough at the end so you could do soft instead of hard. And at that point, with the softness of everyone’s thoughts, it becomes the fastest lap instead of just guarding against the Safety Car thing. And then we find ourselves on a fast lap.
What we talked about before the race started, but then we found ourselves in that way of thinking, not necessarily in such an organized way as we would have liked.
Quotes: Dieter Rencken
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On this day in F1
- 35 years ago today Alain Prost won the British Grand Prix after the checkered flag accidentally showed an early lap at Silverstone
