How Hamilton's needless loss revealed a Mercedes flaw

Juan Manuel Fangio's famous adage about winning by the smallest possible margin has never been truer than in modern grand prix racing. And that's even though he never had to deal with the complex hybrid technology and component limits that force races to be stage-managed by driver and team for fear of consuming too much engine life - with consequences for results downstream - or fuel. And he never encountered a safety car, let alone one of the virtual kind that cost Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes certain victory in the Australian Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari's win owed more to good fortune than to pace, as the man himself admitted, for without the deployment of the VSC on lap 26 of 58 to allow the recovery of Romain Grosjean's stricken Haas with its wobbly front-left wheel, they would not have won. But there's another saying about making your own luck, and had Mercedes not got its calculations indicating how much of a lead Vettel would need to make a pitstop under neutralised conditions and stay ahead wrong, Hamilton would still have won.

But he would also have won had Mercedes taken a different, less conservative, approach to manage the risk posed from laps 19-26 when Hamilton had sacrificed track position to Vettel by making a pitstop.

Even with the computer saying no and indicating, erroneously, that he was more than close enough to Vettel not to lose out, had Hamilton been able to use his pace advantage to close the gap to Vettel more during that phase of the race by way of insurance he would have rendered the timing error moot.

Hamilton, like most racing drivers, would rather not have to take the paint by numbers approach to winning races. Had he gone at his natural pace, he'd have been plenty close enough to ensure Ferrari's strategy of delaying Vettel's pitstop and leaving him out front in case of just such a scenario was negated.

"It's so hard," said Hamilton when asked if he would rather rely on his racing instincts than algorithms. "It's a team effort, but when you're relying on so much data, so much technology to come out with the strategy or whatever it may be... I wish it was down more to personnel. I just wish it was more in my hands, because I feel like I was driving as good as ever today. Really, really happy with how I was driving."

And rightly so. While the Mercedes W09 was the class of the field there's no doubt Hamilton was getting the best out of it. During qualifying, he had looked under serious threat from both Ferrari and Red Bull prior to a stunning lap on his second Q3 run that gave him pole position by almost seven tenths of a second from Kimi Raikkonen.

Fittingly, it was a struggle with management that had made things look closer than they were earlier in qualifying. Hamilton had been hit and miss in ensuring the sensitive rear tyres were not overheating, which can be particularly costly in the final sector of Albert Park, but having closed on Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull on his final out-lap he was forced to back off dramatically between Turns 13 and 14 prior to his flier.

This meant he started the lap with the rear tyres, if anything, slightly below temperature. But it also resulted in the rears being bang in the window when he needed the grip most. The consequence was a brilliant lap on which Hamilton had complete control over his machine at a circuit where he has always, even by his standards, flown.

Errors both for Vettel and Max Verstappen at the rapid Turn 13 right-hander allowed Raikkonen to nick second, and aside from a brief moment when it seemed the Finn might have got the jump on Hamilton off the grid prior to picking up a dab of wheelspin in the second phase of the start, there seemed no doubt of the race result.

"When you're relying on so much data... I wish it was down more to personnel. I just wish it was more in my hands" Lewis Hamilton

The plan went well during the first stint. As is customary, Hamilton ensured he pulled out of DRS range by the time the overtaking-assist became available on lap three of the race before sitting on his lead.

Raikkonen did everything he could to peg him back, particularly before making his pitstop on lap 18, at which point Hamilton had inched 3.9 seconds up the road.

Mercedes, correctly, responded and Hamilton was called into the pits to cover the undercut. Hamilton bolted on a set of softs and his 9s advantage over Vettel, who had run third in the first stint but was not exactly hanging on Raikkonen's heels, turned into a 14s deficit. Hamilton's gap to Raikkonen was largely preserved, the undercut only costing him around half a second.

By the end of the out-lap, the gap to Vettel had closed to 13.079s and it was clear Hamilton had a potentially big pace advantage. But over the four complete laps that followed, he took 0.417s out of Vettel per lap.

Then, for the second time in two laps, a Haas that was effectively running fourth ground to a halt with a wobbly wheel thanks to a cross-threaded wheelnut. The virtual safety car was deployed to allow the recovery of Romain Grosjean's car when Hamilton had an 11.614s gap to Vettel. This put him very comfortably inside the 15s window Mercedes had calculated to cover the need to stay above the minimum allowable time for each of the 20 marshalling sectors.

So when Vettel pitted for softs and emerged around six tenths in front of Hamilton, there was shock. It wasn't that Mercedes hadn't considered the scenario, it thought it had it easily covered.

"We calculated the VSC gap that was needed and our computer said 15s was the necessary time in order to jump us," said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. "We were always within this, [with a] three-to-four second margin and then suddenly the cameras showed us the pit exit and Sebastian came out in front of us."

The precise reason for this miscalculation has yet to be revealed. But whatever the cause, Mercedes had made a serious error. It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but you can argue that it would also have made racing sense for Hamilton to close the gap more. After all, even if the required gap was calculated correctly, this would have minimised the risk.

What if something had happened on track that had delayed Hamilton, or a mistake that cost a few seconds, and coincided with a VSC? Winning F1 races today is all about using your pace when you most needed it, and Mercedes didn't take out enough insurance. While that made sense during the first stint when Hamilton didn't pull away from Raikkonen by anywhere near as much as he could have, once the stop had been made you can make a stronger argument for pushing.

"I had extra tools, I could have been further ahead by the first pitstop," said Hamilton. "There were so many good things we could have done, but if one thing is telling you one thing and you think you're doing it to the book, within the limits, then there's nothing you can do."

Hamilton didn't take the attitude that there was nothing he could do in the remaining 27 racing laps. He mounted an attack on lap 46, setting what was then the fastest lap of the race and using the DRS to try to latch onto the back of Vettel. But he overdid it into the Turn 9/10 right/left, rattling over the kerb and dropping 2.7s behind his rival.

Even then, he did not give up. With five laps to go, he was on the brink of getting back into DRS range. But he'd asked too much of the sensitive rear tyres and lost time in Turn 13, dropping to 2.2s behind. Game over.

Realistically, it was always a long shot. Hamilton had a pace advantage, but even in a Ferrari that was not as competitive as the team had hoped Vettel was never going to let him have a sniff at victory. Good fortune, and a dash of sensible strategy, had given Vettel track position and a driver of his calibre was never going to relinquish it - especially with a seven-lap tyre life advantage as they both ran to the end on softs.

"I was able to manoeuvre the car and get relatively close," said Hamilton. "It was like a magnet, you can't get the magnet past a certain region. I was able to follow a lot closer than I remember in the past, but I couldn't get any closer than that.

"The engine was overheating and I've got to do seven races with this engine, preferably more if I can. I was on the limiter, and I was too hot, but I was pushing, I was [thinking] 'I'm just going to keep going'. I cooled it down and then it started coming back. I got relatively close.

"I was like 'can I fight, can I go?' And they [the pitwall] were taking their time. So I was like, 'I'm going for it', and I gave it everything. I was quite close behind him in his tow and just locked the right front, didn't make the corner.

"I should probably sit back, save my engine and use the life of it for the next ones. That goes against my spirit of racing, because I want to race right down to the last. The way this sport is set up with fuel saving and all these different things, three engines, you have to think about that and back off. So it's probably not exciting for the fans to have seen, but I want to finish my season on those three engines, I don't want to have to have a fourth."

Ferrari and Vettel deserve plenty of credit for capitalising on the situation. Knowing that Mercedes could not cover both cars as Valtteri Bottas was down the grid after his qualifying crash, it was logical to force Hamilton to pit to cover Raikkonen then leave Vettel out there. And once the VSC did its thing, Ferrari's reward was track position.

"I want the car to be spot on when I hit the brakes and turn in, and in that window I'm not yet happy" Sebastian Vettel

While the Ferrari chassis still isn't working as hoped, the engine was strong - in qualifying on the straights combined it was gaining around three tenths on the Mercedes, albeit partly thanks to running lower downforce levels - Vettel had the race in the bag.

"The car has huge potential but I'm still struggling a bit," said Vettel. "If we compare to where we're still a bit weak [on the data], it's where I also feel that the car is not there yet.

"When you talk about something that you miss as a driver, the car doesn't respond the way you like and it's still sliding in places you don't want to slide. I want the car to be spot on when I hit the brakes and turn in, and in that window I'm not yet happy."

The positive thing for Ferrari is that having made major changes to its car concept, extending the wheelbase, changing the front wing philosophy and adopting the high rake, there should be more to come as it fully understands its design.

Team-mate Raikkonen also suffered from the VSC, having had the edge over Vettel during the first stint when both were on the ultra-soft tyres. But once on the softs, he struggled a little more in particular during the early stages of the stint.

This left him vulnerable to attack from Daniel Ricciardo, but once the order was shuffled by the intervention of the VSC and then the actual safety car, the near-impossibility of overtaking meant that there was little chance of a change of order.

Ricciardo, who had made one of the few overtaking moves of the race to pass Nico Hulkenberg into Turn 13, a move completed into the following corner, could do nothing more than shadow Raikkonen - setting fastest lap along the way.

After his three-place grid penalty and running eighth early on, Ricciardo emerged as the lead Red Bull driver when Verstappen spun while running fifth having suffered some floor damage clouting the kerb at the exit of the ultra-fast right/left Turn 11/12.

Verstappen also lost track position, by the narrowest of margins, to Fernando Alonso's McLaren thanks to the VSC, spending the rest of the race pursuing the slower orange machine but unable to make a move. This completed a frustrating weekend for Red Bull, which remains confident it will have the edge over Ferrari at less power-sensitive tracks thanks to the strength of its chassis.

Of course, all four of the drivers who finished fourth through seventh had a lot to thank the Haas team's pitstop disasters for, as without that Kevin Magnussen and Grosjean would have finished fourth and fifth.

Despite Ferrari's victory and Hamilton's defeat, the form of Mercedes is still ominous. But no matter what the circumstances, a non-Mercedes victory in the season-opener was the shot in the arm the 2018 season needs. And if Ferrari can get on top of a car that's currently proving tricky, Australia proved it can be close enough to give Mercedes something to think about.

And if it, or Red Bull, can do so more strongly later in the season, Mercedes might have some tough calls to make on exactly when to use its pace. After all, as Australia showed, it can be all too easy to misjudge just how big a cushion you need - even in this overtly data-driven era of grand prix racing.