A new Mercedes Ferrari? Silver Arrows in the strategy pool

2023 also saw a series of failures within Brackley’s strategy team. The most painful of these was probably the USA GP in Austin and parallel to the bankruptcy of Japan is obvious. At that time, too, Mercedes tried to push the 1 stop strategy for too long with Hamilton, who was P2 behind Lando Norris and ahead of Verstappen.

However, the tires did not hold up. The Pirellis cost Hamilton a lot of time and forced a change of approach at the worst possible time. This gave Verstappen the bottom lane in one of the few races where victory looked realistically possible.

In the rainy drama at Zandvoort a few months earlier it wasn’t about victory, but nobody gambled as openly as Mercedes. While all the other teams went in or sat out once the rain started, the Silvers did the worst of both worlds. They waited a little longer, but only stopped before it started raining again. There was also mismanagement like in Japan, when Russell and Hamilton got into a fight before the teams strategically separated them.

Mercedes: A possible Formula 1 victory failed in 2022 too

There are also similar examples from the end of the 2022 Formula 1 season in Mexico and the USA, hard tires led Mercedes to the pits. The soft approach in Mexico City fell on the soft lines of the competition.

In the USA, after practice, they only saved the hard tire for the last race instead of the medium tire. Bad choice: Hamilton lost the lead and thus the win to Verstappen.

What is causing the Mercedes strategy to go wrong?

During their dominant years in Formula 1, Mercedes was something of a model for the complete execution of the racing process, including strategy. There is no uniform answer as to where the fault lies in the system for the eight-time world champion team. In the past, our own simulations have been presented as explanations several times (for example in Mexico 2022).

In addition, being a chasing team rather than a leader also has an impact on the team’s willingness to take risks. If you start the race with the same strategy as your favorite, then there is a very high probability that you will finish behind him. In a desperate search for alternative strategies, teams run the risk of automatic overload – but instead of going further, they may go further back.

Meanwhile, Red Bull and Max Verstappen can currently afford to take a conservative approach in most races due to their superior pace. There was also a constant balance of strategy in Silvers’ racing setup in the ground-effect era. They also liked to experiment with aggressive setups there – especially in Hamilton. A risk that often didn’t work out.