Our verdict on Hamilton's Singapore strategy failure

Ferrari admits Lewis Hamilton lost a podium at Formula 1's Singapore Grand Prix due to a strategy failure which saw him slip back to sixth place.

Hamilton took "full responsibility" for his strategy calls, but should Ferrari have done more to save his race, could it have managed him and team-mate Charles Leclerc better?

Here's what our team thinks...

A race Ferrari (probably) was always going to lose

Scott Mitchell-Malm

Ferrari's understandably peeved that Hamilton's strategy became such a big post-race talking point when it seemed internally clear the error was his, not the team's. 

But that's what happens when a key bit of information - namely, Hamilton being told to pit but not doing so! - doesn't make it onto the broadcast because of a weird Ferrari-Hamilton radio dead spot. 

Regardless, this wasn't a race Ferrari won, or put itself in the best position to win. And I suspect it didn't have the car to anyway.

So really let's not take anything away from a pretty crushing Max Verstappen/Red Bull performance. Hamilton could have been on pole. Charles Leclerc could have led into the first corner. Ferrari could have managed the split-strategy better. None of that happened!

And even if it did, Verstappen's superior tyre management - his pace at the end of the first stint was so far beyond what anyone else could do on old rubber - probably would have won out anyway. 

Track position would have been a big hurdle to overcome, but Verstappen and Red Bull did everything right to make sure that was a non-issue regardless of whether others put their best foot forward or not. 

A baffling strategy to pursue

Gary Anderson

Ferrari seems to be able to shoot itself in the foot at any opportunity.

I just don’t understand what Ferrari was trying to achieve in Singapore, even if Hamilton was pushing for it. There was a two-tyre choice to start the race, softs to potentially get off the start line better and mediums to then go long for the overcut, so why, when Hamilton was on mediums, was he the first driver to pit?

If you have two cars and they are more or less at the same performance level and you start them on different strategies, then both the drivers and the team need to understand that indecision, even just for a lap, can put all that effort down the pan very quickly.

If one driver is genuinely faster than the other, then it needs to react and be let past immediately; running behind your team-mate for more than one lap just eats up your tyres. So in the end both cars suffer overall race time.

Early in the race, the drivers and the team need to let the different strategies play out and not stand in the way of a driver getting the best result they can, but if it’s on the run down to the chequered flag, say the last 10% of the race, then other than balancing out the risk of being caught and overtaken by another team's car, you should stick to your positions.

As we saw in the sprint race between the two McLaren drivers, it didn’t really matter to the team which driver was to finish fourth or fifth, but for one of its drivers, greed took over.

It was the last lap, and Oscar Piastri was basically boxed in with Leclerc running slowly with tyre problems, so Lando Norris should have also taken that into account. Never mind the accident, that loss of points in the constructors' could cost McLaren $10million in prize money.

It’s all about respect between drivers, honesty when you're reporting your pace to the team and the team being bold enough to make those sometimes difficult decisions without hesitation.

Are Hamilton and Ferrari really in sync?

Josh Suttill

I have sympathy for the lack of radio being broadcast, making things look worse than they were. And Hamilton's immediate post-race apology over the team radio was classy.

But it still leaves some key questions for me about Hamilton's current confidence in Ferrari.

Why did Hamilton not pit under the virtual safety car when told to do so? Looking at the onboard, he clearly made no attempt to enter the pits - and that can only be for two reasons.

Either he simply forgot, or he overruled Ferrari.

If it's the latter, that does raise questions about whether Hamilton has 100% faith and trust in Ferrari's strategists. And to be honest - who could blame him?

We saw his predecessor, Carlos Sainz, doing the same on a number of occasions, essentially dictating the strategy from the cockpit.

That will cause problems - like a total misreading of the race because you don't have a full picture - but it's a consequence of being put in the wrong position too many times.

It feels like mistrust from those previous mistakes might have burned Ferrari today.