Anderson: How the big F1 teams get it wrong

When you're sitting on the Formula 1 pitwall, as I was for many years, calls have to be made that can make or break an entire race weekend.

So what happens to teams and their drivers, who are, after all, just another member of the squad, when spur-of-the-moment decisions must be made?

Saturday at the British Grand Prix provided one of the most dramatic qualifying sessions I've seen for many a year. All three segments were cliff-hangers that went down to the dying seconds.

Somehow, both Ferrari and Williams contrived to fail to get either of their cars - which should have been in the top 10 - out of the bottom six in Q1. Looking into what happened here reveals how things can go wrong.

At the start of the session, 18 cars were on track (Williams and Ferrari were still in the pits, with the latter heading out after a few minutes), so the track conditions were always going to change very quickly.

From my point of view, you could have gone out on slicks from the beginning because while there was a slight mist in the air, the track already had a patchy dry line, and it was clear that the conditions would likely get worse towards the end of Q1.

Alonso put a brave face on after both Ferraris were eliminated in Q1 © LAT

On intermediates, the top cars were about eight seconds off a dry-weather laptime. This is the kind of time offset that allows you to get the slicks on and be at least as fast as on the intermediates.

Jenson Button was the first to start posting quick sector times, setting his personal best in sector two on his out-lap with just over five minutes to go.

At that point, it was clear that slicks were the way to go. But two teams seemed determined not to deviate from the plan.

Williams had gone out late for its first run in an attempt to get through Q1 using just one set of intermediates. Felipe Massa went out for the first time after six minutes, with Valtteri Bottas following just over half a minute later.

They did put in the fifth and sixth-fastest times, but were still circulating on intermediates while others where either starting to go out on slicks, or in the garage preparing to.

Williams stuck to its plan for too long. Rather than going back out immediately on slicks it ended up being the last team to send its cars out, with just two-and-a-half minutes remaining, and missed the best of the track conditions, ending up 17th and 18th.

As for Ferrari, we've seen this kind of mistake before. Both cars went earlier in the session than Williams, set a time on intermediates, then sat in the pits watching everyone bump them before heading out late on slicks, leaving them 19th and 20th.

This was a bigger crime than Williams's. The two drivers had been out on track on intermediates earlier and should have given the information to the team that it was time to go to slicks. They didn't do this, and the decision to go out on medium-compound Pirellis was made too late.

Why, I ask myself, can someone not simply look up at the sky and make a decision based on what they see? The answer is that everyone is frightened of sticking their head above the parapet and making a call because if they do, and for any reason they're wrong, it will be chopped off.

In these situations, where quick decisions are needed, doing so by committee has never worked and never will.

While the big boys got it wrong, the smallest team in the pitlane - Marussia - got it exactly right. It's a team of racers with no politics. They realise that if you stick your hand out of the back of the prat perch and it gets wet, that usually means it's raining. And they ended up fourth and sixth in Q1, which put a smile on my face!

Anderson approves of old-school ways of making decisions on the weather © LAT

The final part of qualifying was when it all went very topsy-turvy. On the first run Lewis Hamilton was fastest, but the last sector of the lap was the wettest. It appeared that would be that, but at the end of the session it got a bit warmer and all except the Toro Rossos and Daniel Ricciardo went out for another run.

I was standing outside the Mercedes garage during this session keeping an eye on what the team was up to. To be honest, I thought that time had run out. Both cars were ready to go and the mechanics were holding the tyre blankets on. To my surprise, Hamilton was staring across the garage at Nico Rosberg's car, while Rosberg was looking straight ahead.

When Rosberg's mechanics started taking the blankets off, Hamilton's did the same. Both dropped the cars onto the ground and Rosberg pulled out first, only for Lewis to nip out in front of him. Lewis's whole focus seemed to be to get out first - which you can't blame him for - and he achieved it.

Because they were so late out, Rosberg didn't really have time to slow down and find clear track. He started his lap just behind Hamilton as the chequered flag was waved. Early in the lap Hamilton locked the left-front and went a little wide and on the run down the Wellington straight he backed off and let Rosberg through.

So why did Hamilton back off? He was in a perfect position - one he had worked hard to get - and had his biggest rival behind him. Doing a fast lap in those conditions is about making fewer mistakes than anyone else and he had made one, but he had no idea if Rosberg would make more and there was a long way to go in the lap.

The last sector was a lot faster, so Hamilton went from fastest to sixth.

In the end, it didn't matter because he won anyway, but it's another example of how keeping things simple - in this case just completing the lap and seeing what happened - would have been the right option.

A point could come when decisions like this will really matter. The world championship might be decided on an instantaneous decision either on the pitwall or by the driver. Just ask Fernando Alonso about the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to see what can happen.

From what I saw during qualifying at Silverstone, making sure you get the best decisions is a lot more important - and cheaper - than throwing millions of pounds at finding the next tenth of a second.