FANDEBRIEF

Race Analysis · Canadian 2024

tyre story

Mercedes Threw Away Hamilton's Best Drive of the Season

Lewis Hamilton drove the fastest race pace in Montreal and finished fourth because his team made a safety car call that didn't need to happen.

Lewis Hamilton drove the fastest race in Montreal and finished fourth. Max Verstappen won with slower pace. The difference was one pit stop that Mercedes didn't need to make.

Key Finding

Hamilton was seven tenths faster per lap than Verstappen and still finished 5 seconds behind him. That's a strategy failure, not a driver one.

Key Finding

Hamilton was seven tenths faster per lap than Verstappen and still finished 5 seconds behind him. That's a strategy failure, not a driver one.

Hamilton was seven tenths quicker per lap than Verstappen across the full race distance. He ran longer on the intermediates, matched him through the first dry stint, and was managing his mediums comfortably when the safety car came out on Lap 54.

Mercedes brought him in for hards. Red Bull left Verstappen out on mediums. The race had sixteen laps remaining. The track was dry. There was no reason to think those mediums wouldn't make it home — Verstappen had been on them for nine laps and they were barely degrading.

Key Finding

Hamilton was seven tenths faster per lap than Verstappen and still finished 5 seconds behind him. That's a strategy failure, not a driver one.

Key Finding

Hamilton was seven tenths faster per lap than Verstappen and still finished 5 seconds behind him. That's a strategy failure, not a driver one.

Mercedes' own data should have told them this was the wrong call. Hamilton's mediums had been degrading at one second per lap across his eleven-lap stint before the safety car. That's aggressive, but sustainable — especially with a safety car bunching the field and giving the tyres a thermal reset behind the car.

Verstappen's mediums were degrading at half a second per lap across twenty-five laps. They were in better shape. If Red Bull trusted them to go the distance from Lap 46, why wouldn't Mercedes trust Hamilton's younger set to survive sixteen laps from Lap 54?

Key Finding

Hamilton was seven tenths faster per lap than Verstappen and still finished 5 seconds behind him. That's a strategy failure, not a driver one.

Key Finding

Hamilton was seven tenths faster per lap than Verstappen and still finished 5 seconds behind him. That's a strategy failure, not a driver one.

The irony is that Hamilton's hard tyres were faster than the mediums once they came up to temperature. He was lapping in the low 80s on hards while Verstappen was in the high 80s on mediums. But by then he was behind George Russell and couldn't use the pace advantage.

This wasn't a tyre gamble gone wrong. It was a panic call that ignored the fact Hamilton had the fastest car on track and sixteen laps to use it. Verstappen won because Red Bull didn't overthink it. Mercedes lost third place because they did.

Key Finding

Hamilton was seven tenths faster per lap than Verstappen and still finished 5 seconds behind him. That's a strategy failure, not a driver one.

At Barcelona next week, watch how Mercedes handle safety car scenarios. If the instinct is still to cover off risk rather than press an advantage, Hamilton's going to keep finishing behind cars he's quicker than. The data from Montreal is unambiguous: he had the pace to take third. The team took the position away from him.

JC

Jamie Carver

@@jamiecarver_f1

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Hamilton's pace advantage wasted by Mercedes strategy call