Mercedes Principal Toto Wolff Praises Lewis Hamilton and Strategy Team Following Tight Barcelona Victory
An exceptionally executed two-stop strategy put the reigning champions ahead of Red Bull.
Seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton earned his 100th pole position last weekend during the Spanish Grand Prix, ultimately taking home the victory with a sensational drive on Sunday, his fifth consecutive win in Barcelona.
The British racer took home his milestone pole position with a flying lap of one minute 16.741 seconds in the third round of qualifying, although he was unable to improve on his time on his second attempt. Nonetheless, the driver now boasts 100 pole positions in his career, far surpassing previous leader Michael Schumacher‘s 68 pole positions.
As for the race on Sunday, Hamilton spent most laps following closely behind Max Verstappen following a turn-one overtake which saw the Red Bull driver power down the inside line coming from P2. Despite Verstappen slowly pulling ahead, Mercedes managed to flawlessly execute a two-stop strategy which brought the world champion back into the fight, ultimately making up a 22-second deficit over the 18 laps to regain P1 and take home Hamilton’s sixth victory in Barcelona.
“They are just fantastic and the mathematicians and strategists coming up with all the simulations, you ask for a plan… and in our plan, if we had to stop now, we would end up catching him one lap to the end, and we would have a tire differential of 1.4s, and we believed that it is enough and we trust them and we trust the data,” said Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff. “But they were terribly wrong. We caught him four laps to the end.”
Hamilton now stands 14 points clear of Verstappen in the driver’s championship.
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