Max Verstappen was at the edge of a defeat when he clinched his victory at the Circuit of the Americas during the United States GP.
The tyre strategy of Max Verstappen was aggressive and on point, as it clinched him a victory against Lewis Hamilton. However, it could have turned fatal if the race was a little longer.
Lewis Hamilton was gaining on Max Verstappen immensely as the latter’s tyres were on the brink. Mercedes’ James Vowels thinks the result would have been different if the race was a little longer.
“I think you would have seen a different race result, but they managed that last stint very well and dropped the level of management in corners as Lewis got closer to them to make sure he had the tyres remaining for those last few laps,” Vowles said.
Verstappen was on the verge of losing against Hamilton when Mick Schumacher came in the former’s way. But eventually, the German race driver helped the Red Bull ace get a DRS, which gave Verstappen a little more breathing room.
Earlier pitstop wouldn’t have done anything against Max Verstappen
When asked about what could have happened if Hamilton had made a pitstop a couple of laps earlier, Vowels. He replies that it wouldn’t have made a difference.
“If we had gone a lap or two earlier a few things would have happened,” he said. “Verstappen would have been closer on pit exit. He is on fresher tyres so, for every lap he has been going relative to Lewis, he is actually pulling just a little bit of a gap on track and, when Lewis stops, he has to push back to basically catch back up to Verstappen.”
“If the gap is too large, let’s take it to an exaggerated level of 15 seconds, he will use all his tyres back up closing that gap down and there is nothing left in the race.”
“So that’s where the compromise lies. What you want is to find the lap that minimises the gap on exit and maximises the differential therefore at the end of the race. And when we stopped was that, in terms of the models.”
“It’s difficult to really know what would have happened if we stopped a lap earlier or lap later, but what you are reliant on really for the strategy to work is Verstappen to run out of tyres and they didn’t really do that until it was too late.”
