‘If we’re being harsh’ – Analyst questions Mercedes’ call after ‘disastrous’ Sprint Qualy

Lewis Hamilton leads George Russell down the pit lane

After Lewis Hamilton’s “pretty disastrous” Sprint Qualifying, Bernie Collins has questioned whether Mercedes made a mistake by not giving him a soft tyre run in practice.

Hamilton and his team-mate George Russell showed good pace during Friday’s sole practice session for the Austrian Grand Prix as they challenged Max Verstappen for the top spot throughout the first 50 minutes.

Lewis Hamilton wasn’t able to challenge for pole in Sprint Qualy

But as the drivers swapped to the soft tyres for the final 10 minutes, Verstappen hit his stride, Russell hit traffic and Hamilton went against the majority as he stuck to the hard tyres.

Heading into Sprint Qualifying later in the day, that decision may have cost him.

Hamilton finished SQ3 down in sixth place, 0.584s slower than pole-sitter Verstappen, in what was the Briton’s very first run of the weekend on the soft Pirellis.

Collins, a former Aston Martin strategist turned Sky F1 analyst, reckons Mercedes could “potentially” regret that.

“But,” she continued, “they made some different decisions to everyone else, if we’re being harsh.

“Lewis didn’t run the soft. The only driver not to run the soft in FP1. He ran the hard. So, going into Sprint Qualy, he had to make a step to the medium then a step to the soft.

“Arguably, these are the best drivers in the world so you can make that step but nobody else felt that they could.

“When they go back and look at it, was it the right or wrong decision? We never get the right answer.”

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Hamilton, who was two-tenths down on Russell in SQ3, called it a “disastrous” session.

“I wasn’t in the mix at all, the whole session was pretty disastrous from our point of view,” Hamilton said. “Practice was good, the car felt good, I don’t think we had the pace to be on pole, but very bad laps.”

Having done all his running in FP1 on the hard tyres and nailing the W15’s set-up on the white-walled Pirellis, Collins questioned “how much” that would “translate” when it came to the softer compounds.

“[Hamilton] didn’t get the first run on a medium. The second run, your out-lap is not the same because it’s a used tyre, effectively. SQ2, lots goes wrong. It escalates,” Collins added.

“He was the first car on track in SQ3. That was the best chance to do the out-lap largely as he wanted to. They will be looking at how they could have improved coming into this weekend.

“Their set-up for the start of FP1 was really good, but on a hard tyre and we don’t know how much that translates.”