Mercedes took a risk with Lewis Hamilton's tire vibration
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says that the team took a gamble by not pitting Lewis Hamilton after he flat spotted a tire at the start of the Mexican GP.
A severe vibration could have caused a suspension failure, but Mercedes opted to keep him out rather than blow his title chances with an early unplanned stop.
“All the bad luck Lewis had through the season, he got some of the good luck back today,” said Wolff. “Because he badly flat-spotted the tire, the vibration metrics were scary from the beginning. We had quite a conversation on the radio about whether we should pit him for safety reasons.
“In any other race, we would have pitted him, and lost the race. We kept him out there in order to not throw away the championship for him. Every single lap, every single straight we monitored the vibrations.”
When the vibration numbers got worse, the team called Hamilton in a few laps earlier than planned.
“And then we pitted him a bit earlier, because the vibration metrics were going sky high, and a suspension failure could have easily happened. That was the earliest we could have pitted him. Everything else would have destroyed the race. Honestly, it was not a comfortable situation we found ourselves in there to make that call, weighing up the championship versus a failure of the suspension.”
