On Lap 42 of the Spanish Grand Prix, just as Lewis Hamilton was preparing to attack Max Verstappen on track, Mercedes called him in for his second pit stop.
This was done to allow Lewis to catch up to, and overtake Max on fresher tyres, which he ultimately did.
In Mercedes’ race debrief video, Andrew Shovlin detailed how the team decided to commit to this strategy.
“The conditions were quite different to those that we had seen in Free Practice,” Shovlin explained.
“But from the runs that Lewis and Max were doing, we could see that the tyres were dropping and they were dropping a bit more than we expected from our pre-event simulations, where we actually thought a one-stop and a two-stop were very close in terms of performance.
“What we could start to see when we put that degradation and put it into our linear strategy tools, was that the two stop was now coming out as a clear winner.
“And the point that we actually decide to trigger the stop, that’s the point where we are talking about calling the driver in and getting the pit crew out.
“But when we got into that second stint that was when we really started seriously thinking about making this happen.”
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Shovlin also explains why Mercedes decided call Lewis in exactly on Lap 42.
“We are checking the degradation, so we are making sure that Lewis can actually catch up on that other set. We are making sure that when he does catch Max he has got the pace to be able to overtake him.
“And for a lot of that stint we were actually just reviewing the optimum lap. We knew it was somewhere in that 40 to 43 region.
“And if we go too early, by the time he catches Max, his tyres haven’t got enough grip to be able to pass.
“If we go too late we haven’t given him enough laps remaining in the race to be able to actually catch and attack,” concluded the Briton.
