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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has stated that Valtteri Bottas’ request for soft tires for his second season at the Portuguese Grand Prix was never considered, as the team did not want to interfere with the result.
Bottas was the quicker of the two Silver Arrows at the start of Sunday’s race, when Lewis Hamilton dropped to third on a difficult first lap influenced by drizzle and the fact that both drivers started on Pirelli’s medium compounds that they took longer to come to life.
Hamilton, however, soon sped up to regain the lead from Bottas with a move to the first corner and never looked back on the road to a 25-second margin of victory, the biggest gap of the season, and a record 92 °. Formula 1. victory.
Before his final stop, Bottas requested a change to the soft compound tire to make up for Hamilton’s stint on hard tires, but the pit wall denied him the alternative strategy.
“We’ve done it on occasion, but it’s always a tough situation,” Wolff explained.
“If you ask the lead driver to go hard because you think he’s the right choice, and then the second driver starts to convince you of the other, it’s very difficult to explain that we basically reversed the cars.
“We don’t want to interfere too much. There will be situations where we will allow these calls, but we were quite convinced that hard was the best tire.”
“All the data that we’ve seen from cars tends to outperform medium and soft.
“And when you look at Checo [Sergio Perez] and Esteban [Ocon] in the end the soft one didn’t work at all, it was actually the weakest tire towards the end of the race.
“So we were pretty solid in our decision because we expected it to be the best tire.”
Light rain during the opening laps of the race allowed Carlos Sainz’s McLaren to take the lead on soft tires, and the warm-up of the red-striped compound paid off on the low-grip surface.
Wolff admitted to being excited at the prospect of a different team leading the pack, pointing to the joy of the fans in the Portimão stands as an indication of the direction F1 should take.
“I loved the first few laps,” said the Austrian. “With the drizzle coming in, we knew that with the medium we would probably not be good. But others had problems too.
“I think everything McLaren does to put the tire in the window has worked well.”
“They were up to date from the first moment. Both drivers are extremely competent. I really liked the joy of the crowd when Carlos passed the main straight in the lead.
“And this is just what Formula 1 needs, we need to have a lot of variability, fighting for positions, turn one, Valtteri against [Max] Verstappen was great. Valtteri taking the lead. The beginning was very entertaining. ”
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