© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin explains what played into Valtteri Bottas seemingly ignoring team orders to let Lewis Hamilton pass him.
At the Spanish Grand Prix Mercedes decided to pit Lewis Hamilton for the second time, so that he can hunt down and pass Max Verstappen on fresher tyres.
However he still had to overtake Valtteri Bottas, who after Hamilton’s pit stop was in P2 on an older set of tyres. Mercedes understandably asked the Finn to move over for Hamilton, but he didn’t seem to comply, which led to Lewis seemingly having to do a legitimate overtake.
When asked about this after the race, Bottas said he “could have let him by earlier”, but he was “not here to let people by”. Later he explained he was also trying to manage his gap to Charles Leclerc.
Now Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin explains what led to Valtteri not making it easy for Lewis.
“Valtteri is in his own race,” the Briton explained in Mercedes’ race debrief video.
“One of the things we said to Valtteri was try and build this gap to Leclerc, although their lap times were starting to get more similar as Valtteri’s tyres were wearing out.
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“So he was trying to push as fast as he can. He then got the message not to hold Lewis up and he would have been able to let him go by much more easily if Lewis had got DRS the lap before they actually passed.
“Now, Lewis was within 1.01 seconds of Valtteri. So only one hundredth of a second from getting DRS and if he had, it would have been much easier for Valtteri to let him go on the straight.
“Unfortunately, when Lewis is a second behind, Valtteri would lose around two seconds if he just backed up to let him go. It was really that balance between his own race and Lewis’ race that led to the loss there.
“But reviewing it, given Valtteri’s tyres had run out shortly after that, given he had to overtake the Ferrari on track anyway, we would have probably triggered it earlier, brought Valtteri in for a new set, he would have passed Charles relatively easily and that situation would have meant Lewis lost less time and, importantly, Valtteri would have lost less time,” concluded Shovlin.
