Mercedes admit to 'clear mistake' that left Hamilton 'angry'

Mercedes has conceded to making a "clear mistake" over starting Lewis Hamilton on the soft tyres in the Singapore Grand Prix. 

Hamilton was the only car in the top 10 on the grid to line-up on the C5 rubber, with those around the third-place starter on medium-compound Pirelli rubber. 

Mercedes was hoping Hamilton would leapfrog P2 starter Max Verstappen off the line, but he was unable to do so, meaning his strategy then unravelled as he was forced into an early stop for the hard tyres, creating a significant offset to cars around him.

George Russell later overcut his team-mate, with Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc also using fresh rubber to demote the seven-time F1 champion to sixth at the flag. Later, Hamilton describing how "angry" he was at the decision. 

Mercedes' technical director James Allison has now conceded it was a "clear mistake" by the team. 

"Before I give the explanation [as to why Hamilton was on softs], I just want to start off by saying we shouldn't have started on the softs, it was a mistake and if we could turn back time, we would do what those around us did in selecting the mediums," he said.

"The reasoning was that the soft tyre very often allows you to get away from the start abruptly and allows you a good chance of jumping a place or two in the opening laps of the race.

"We had no real expectation before the race that we were going to suffer the sort of difficulties that we experienced on the soft rubber, and imagined that we would get the upside of it. 

"We didn't and then hoped that the downside of the soft being fragile wouldn't play out particularly badly. 

"The pace starts very easily in Singapore, and drivers then build up the pace over many laps, leaving the soft perfectly okay to run relatively deeply into the pit-window, but we didn't get the place at the start. 

"The pace started building up and that left Lewis with a car that was not particularly happy, suffering from quite poor degradation, and needing to come in early as a consequence. 

"It ruined his race and it was a clear mistake."

Mercedes had 'great weapon' it did not get to use

One potential upside of the strategy, if there had been a safety car, is that it could have allowed Hamilton a fresh set of medium tyres deep in the race, akin to the strategy Mercedes used in the 2023 Marina Bay event where a second stop for fresh mediums allowed a challenge for the win. 

"It was considered, it was certainly there as a great weapon," Allison said of the fresh medium tyre. 

"Had there been a safety car, an opportune moment in the race, that would have been one of the upsides of that strategy, but once we embarked on the soft-hard strategy, we were considering changing to a two-stop for Lewis at various points during the race. 

"Although that would have put him out on fresher rubber, and he would have been swift on that fresher rubber, all our calculations suggested that he would not actually have gained back the pit-stop loss. 

"So it was there in the hutch, we could have used it and it would have been good at a safety car, but in a normal, uninterrupted race, which for the first time in forever we got in Singapore, that tyre was not a thing that would have helped Lewis' weekend."