Toto Wolff has admitted that his team ‘read the race wrong’ after leaving Lewis Hamilton furious at the Singapore Grand Prix. The Brit started from third on the grid but dropped to sixth at the chequered flag.
Hamilton produced one of his better qualifying performances on Saturday, placing his Mercedes machine into a third-place grid slot for the Grand Prix, but Mercedes gambled away his chances of a strong result with a bold strategy.
With most of the field starting on mediums, the seven-time world champion strapped on some soft compound Pirelli rubber with the aim of making a move on second-placed Max Verstappen during the early stages. This did not materialise, and the tyre selection forced Mercedes’ hand in terms of in-race strategy.
After overheating his tyres, Mercedes boxed the Brit on lap 18 for hards, leaving him with a long race of management ahead. Hamilton protested the decision on the radio multiple times, suggesting that the team were “killing him” by bringing him in so much earlier than his competitors.
The outcome of this strategy was a drop of three places for the legendary Brit. He lost out to Oscar Piastri, George Russell and Charles Leclerc, all of whom overcut him with a favourable medium-to-hard transition. Mercedes have now owned up to their mistake.
“I think we’ve read the race wrong,” Wolff admitted. “We took a decision based on historic Singapore races where it is basically a procession, Monaco-like, and that the soft tyre would give him an opportunity at the start.
“That was pretty much the only overtaking opportunity. That was the wrong decision that we all took together jointly. It felt like a good offset but with the rear tyre deg that we had it was just one way and that was backwards.
“So, there was a logic behind it but obviously it was contrary to what we should’ve decided but it doesn’t hide away from the fact that the car is too slow. Maybe the opposition are ahead or behind but that doesn’t change anything.”
Mercedes are now trying to find their way out of a difficult run. The Silver Arrows clocked up three wins in a four-race span before the summer break, but Hamilton’s last four outings have produced no results better than P5, and team-mate Russell has fared little better with just one podium in his last six.
