Leave the Mercedes strategists alone

If you have ever visited the famous casino in Monte Carlo and played roulette, you will know that you never win big if you spread your stake equally over red and black.

Well, when the safety car came out, first in virtual and then a more real form after Max Verstappen piled into the Ste Devote wall, Mercedes wanted to win big and took a risk. It put everything on red.

It didn't work out and Mercedes went from a one-two and guaranteed Lewis Hamilton victory to a Nico Rosberg win, letting Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel take second for good measure. It also ended up with a very dejected Hamilton.

We've heard all sorts of reasons why Hamilton was called into the pits. But Niki Lauda cut to the heart of the matter when he said on Sky Sports that there was "a lot of radio chatter and confusion", leading to the wrong decision being made.

I have sat on the pitwall running cars on many occasions. When something like the Verstappen accident happens, you have to be ready for it and have a clear idea of what needs to happen in certain situations so you can react properly. You have to be quick.

But the most important thing is not to have a bunch of people who have not been focused on these kinds of decisions interfering - that's when "chatter and confusion" takes over and people end up looking very stupid.

Daimler boss Dieter Zetsche was not happy with the Mercedes blunder © LAT

If you have someone doing the job, let them do it. Sometimes you only have seconds to make a decision and sometimes the situation can change dramatically during that time.

You have to let a responsible person decide. Later, you can decide whether or not they are up to the job but not during the process. Who knows, maybe if Mercedes had let the relevant people get on with their jobs, the right call might have been made in the first place.

Every lap, I would be re-assessing the position of my cars on track and the time gap relative to the cars just ahead and behind. If you already have this clear picture in your mind, you will know whether or not to respond if someone near you chooses to pit.

Do you follow them in? Do you stay out and push to try and gain a position? Or can you stop your car without losing positions?

In Hamilton's case, this was easier because he was leading, so you only have to take into account the gaps to the cars behind him. Only Rosberg and Vettel were close enough to be relevant, which doesn't make it too difficult an equation.

The gaps on lap 63 before the virtual safety car signs were showed had Hamilton 19.2s ahead of Rosberg, who was 1.8s ahead of Vettel. Vettel was 11.6 seconds ahead of Kvyat, so none of Hamilton's main contenders were in a position to make a pitstop without losing position on track.

Mercedes, and Hamilton, were left facing difficult questions after Monaco © LAT

By calling in Hamilton, he was going to lose a place to main rival Rosberg. And if a fraction of time was lost, as indeed was the case thanks to traffic in the pitlane, he would lose out to Vettel too. Any reasonable analysis of the situation stated that none of those four cars should stop.

The fact that three of them didn't and only Hamilton did tells you all you need to know. It's that simple. Any other factors you have taken into account, such as thinking one of the others would pit, were unlikely given the race circumstances.

Track position is everything in Monaco, double so given how the tyres were standing up. So it wasn't as if the advantage of fresh rubber was going to guarantee a pass. The top four should all have stayed out. And if one of them had stopped, they would have lost position anyway.

Another factor you have to consider is the nature of the accident and how long the safety car - real or electronic - might be out there for. We heard one driver being asked over the radio to give some feedback on how long the clean-up might take, which shows the value of such information.

In this case, it was a fairly big accident so it was always going to be a fine line between the driver being hurt due to something perhaps penetrating the chassis and hitting his legs. If that happens, the driver could be trapped for a time. And repairs to the barriers have to be taken into account.

Rosberg's pitwall called his strategy perfectly © LAT

If either of these had been the case then the race could have run to the end behind he safety car, or it could have been red flagged. As 75 per cent of the race had been completed, the race could have been called and full points allocated.

And were the race to be red flagged and restarted, you are allowed to change tyres anyway!

As it happened, it wasn't long at all - except for the total confusion among everyone due to the virtual safety car preceding the real one. Then we had the ridiculous need to let the lapped cars go past the safety car, which probably cost a lap or two of racing.

Lapped cars should be sent to the back of the train, which would be much quicker and mean they are ready to go racing when the safety car comes in. If they've been lapped, they can stay a lap or two down and this gets them out of the way of those up front who are fighting for points and, in the end, a championship.

For all the talking we've heard about it, I have no idea why Hamilton was called in. It just doesn't make sense. It's the equivalent of putting six month's wages onto red 23, only without the reward to justify the risk. Hamilton had the race won already.

I just hope that none of the Mercedes team went to the casino while they were in Monte Carlo...

Hamilton's stop left him behind Vettel - but he overtake with fresher rubber © LAT

It was even more baffling because overtaking in Monaco has always been very difficult. It is another track where the DRS is a waste of time, but it's for a good reason given how short the pit straight is.

But we also have the problem that the cars just can't follow each other closely enough.

We always say you can't follow another car through fast corners. But downforce also exists in medium and low-speed corners.

Any time that you have a car that generates aerodynamic forces to help it with track grip, following another car will not be easy because of the turbulence generated by the leading car.

If you need any more proof of this just look at Lewis Hamilton's last 10 laps of the Monaco Grand Prix.

He was on a fresh set of the faster super-soft tyres and up against Sebastian Vettel on a set of soft tyres that had already done around 30 laps and also lost their temperatures following the safety-car period. So he could hustle Vettel but he never looked like being able to dive down the inside.

I hope someone who makes the decisions as to the future direction of the F1 regulations takes off their rose-tinted glasses for long enough to see what I see - or even more importantly reads the results of the fan survey that AUTOSPORT is carrying out.

I am fairly hopeful that there will be a lot of requests for 'on-track racing' as opposed to the procession we are currently seeing with only good or bad strategy decisions altering the running order.