While Lewis Hamilton questioned Mercedes for not informing him about teammate George Russell’s one-stop strategy during the Belgian GP, team principal.
Toto Wolff defended the decision, asserting that pitting Hamilton twice was the ‘right thing to do’.
Shortly after the race, the 26-year-old was disqualified when the FIA determined that his W15 F1 car was underweight by 1.5 kilograms.
Consequently, Hamilton inherited the top position and secured full points for the win.
Mercedes attributes the weight loss during the race to excessive tire wear.
The seven-time world champion revealed to Viaplay that he was called in for a second pit stop despite informing his team that the tires were holding up well.
Wolff, however, argued that Russell’s one-stop call was made on the spot after the driver asked the team to consider it.
He told the media: As a driver you don’t have the full picture because he said his tyres are good but at that stage, nobody had a one-stop on the radar.
We had to cover the cars behind.
Logically it [a one-stop] just wasn’t on the wasn’t on the radar.
What we did with Lewis was absolutely the right thing to do.
But at the end, George made them survive which couldn’t have been anticipated because if it would have been any of the other top teams would have done it.
Wolff added that while drivers gave their inputs about the tires, the team’s decision was also backed by machines and mathematicians who provided data to make the right call.
He said:”I think we can pick out singular events where the driver had the right idea in the race.
