“That was a mistake” — Mercedes James Allison rues Lewis Hamilton’s alternate strategy as he addresses their “disappointing” result

James Allison, the technical director for Mercedes F1, acknowledged that the team made a mistake by starting Lewis Hamilton on the soft tire at the start of the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday. Under the lights at the Marina Bay circuit, it was an odd sight to see the seven-time world champion begin on the softer C5 rubber while his rivals were on the ideal medium tires.

Lewis Hamilton and the team would have been hoping for a better start than their competitors and some positions off the line by starting on the soft tire. Despite starting the race in P3, things did not go as planned, and they had to make an early stop to switch to the hard tires, which eliminated him from the running for the podium. Following the race, Allison responded to queries from fans on Mercedes’ official YouTube channel, which was posed by the host. Why Lewis Hamilton was starting on the soft tires was questioned by one of the fans. To this, Allison said,

“I just want to start by saying that we shouldn’t have started on the softs; that was a mistake, before I give the explanation. We would choose the mediums, just like those around us, if we could go back in time. The justification for this was that a soft tire frequently gives you the ability to break away from the start quickly and increases your chances of jumping a spot or two in the first few laps of the competition. (1:40)

“We thought that the soft rubber would work to our advantage and we might even pick up a spot or two before the race, but we really had no idea that we would encounter the kind of problems we did on it.We hoped that the drawbacks of the soft being brittle wouldn’t materialize too badly after we didn’t […].

“It didn’t make sense to me when we were so close. I therefore tried my hardest to start on the medium tire, but the team insisted that I start on the soft. After removing the tire covers, everyone was riding on mediums.

In the end, Hamilton finished sixth and was unable to hold off Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc in the closing stages of the race. These drivers, running on brand-new hard tires, easily overcame the F1 legend on the Marina Bay circuit.