What were the chances of Hamilton winning in Barcelona without the virtual safety car?

Formula 1 has ever been freighted with shoulda-woulda-coulda moments. The late, great Murray Walker once opined that, “F1 is ‘if’ backwards.”

On a point of order, Murray, that would be 1F backwards, but I digress.

Lewis Hamilton claimed a significant first grand prix victory for Ferrari in Barcelona, to add to the sprint win he secured in China last year. The emotions churned through his voice on his cooldown lap; you could sense the tears as he said on the radio, “I can’t thank you enough,” he remarked over the airwaves.

“For everyone pushing so hard back at home, I’m so proud of you. And to my family, I love you. And to the fans, thank you for continuing to remind me who I am.”

Let’s remind ourselves who he is: a supremely competitive racing driver. Hamilton has endured a turgid few seasons in ground-effect machinery, which defied his stylistic needs. He has pushed for change at Ferrari, even as tone-deaf leaders on the executive floor have harrumphed that the drivers should focus on driving and talk less.

And this weekend, the payback as Ferrari brought a major new update package which Hamilton admittedly took some time to unpick. Having sat out FP1 while rookie driver Dino Beganovic took his car, Hamilton was surprised not to be able to pick up the threads quickly at a track which was otherwise familiar.

Only after a “reset” between FP3 and qualifying – where he left the paddock and retreated to the sanctuary of his motorhome – did Hamilton snap back into the groove, and he was denied pole position only by a factor of milliseconds. Follow the squiggles on the telemetry trace and you see it comes down to the fractionally greater feather of the throttle he required through the final corner.

The Ferrari was mighty through Barcelona’s Turns 1, 4, 7 and 12, all medium-speed corners that reward a precise feel for modulating brake input – a long-time Hamilton speciality. But even so, George Russell was on pole in what’s considered the quickest car on the grid, Mercedes’ W17, with Kimi Antonelli lining up third, and Monaco proved that Ferrari can no longer count on getting a faster launch.

Would the podium positions have been the same without a VSC?

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

To that end, the Scuderia gambled on starting Hamilton on softs, of which only a used set was available, in a bid to reach Turn 1 first and secure the track position that’s so important at Barcelona. This track is an engineer’s dream, with a broad variety of corners, but a dismal one for fans given how difficult it is to overtake here.

The absence of team-mate Charles Leclerc – who smote the barrier in Q3 and lined up 10th on the grid – meant Hamilton would be on his own against the two Mercedes. Unless Leclerc got the launch of his life, splitting strategies to tag-team the Merc drivers would not be an option.

What you can count on with Mercedes, though, is a spirit of risk-aversion in its stragetic outlook. And so it came to pass.

Ferrari’s opening gambit failed, since Hamilton didn’t make it to the first corner first, but the smart play for Mercedes at this point would have been to give Russell some leeway to push, given that he was on used mediums. The fear ahead of this race, on the second most abrasive track surface of the year, was that the softer to compounds wouldn’t last long enough even for this to be a two-stopper: Pirelli had gone a step softer so this season’s medium (the C3) was last year’s soft, which wasn’t a great race tyre.

But by extension, this year’s soft – the C4 – would be a pretty dismal race tyre. As it was, Russell and the other frontrunners quickly settled into tyre management mode, enabling Hamilton to delay his first pitstop until the end of lap 11 – early, but not far off the predicted window for a two-stopper for those starting on fresh C3s.

At this point, Russell was holding a steady gap of around 3.5 seconds to Hamilton, with Antonelli 1.9s further adrift. Crucially, there was a nice gap opening up further back between seventh-placed Oscar Piastri and eighth-placed Liam Lawson. The Racing Bulls was over 22s behind Hamilton, which was a bit tight – but he was also pitting, to get off his C3s, making the question academic.

Hamilton duly departed the pits in P7, behind Piastri, on one of the two sets of new C2s remaining to him. 26.7s down on the leader, the pitlane time loss of around 23s well within the order of expectation (not so for Lawson, whose stop was peculiarly slow).

“He’s probably going for a three,” mused Russell on the radio.

“You could have given me the heads-up. You’ve exposed me to Kimi now,”
George Russell

But Mercedes felt compelled to respond – to guard against the potential undercut – and Russell was called in next time around. He fed out ahead of Hamilton, but only by 1.5s. Russell was displeased.

“I was managing in that first stint,” he complained. “You could have given me the heads-up. You’ve exposed me to Kimi now.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be long for everyone,” race engineer Marcus Dudley assured him.

“I need an update on the plan, then – are we moving to a three, you think?”

“Still on plan here, George. Nothing to worry about here,” went the exchange.

At this stage, Mercedes still considered Lando Norris the bigger overall threat, certainly to Antonelli. Norris pitted at the end of lap 13 for new C2s so Mercedes brought Antonelli in for the same the next lap around, narrowly avoiding being undercut – Norris was within a second of Kimi as they rounded Turn 2.

This defused the threat to Russell from Antonelli slightly in that it aligned the strategy of the two Mercedes. But was it a mistake to downplay the threat posed by Hamilton?

Lewis stayed within the order of two seconds off Russell’s tail throughout this second stint, and Antonelli was given the go-ahead to “push” and get closer to Hamilton, edging towards a two-second margin. As the lap count entered the 20s, Russell was told “The next seven laps are critical to our race.”

The Mercedes pair had a close scrap through the Barcelona race

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

There is always a delay in broadcasting team radio so it’s difficult to be precise – but highly likely this was lap 21, when Russell was two seconds ahead of Hamilton but Antonelli was still 4s off the Ferrari, with Norris 2.5s further in arrears. Crucially, perhaps, Leclerc was 20s behind Russell and lapping around eight tenths faster than him on four-lap-old C2s, thereby creating a potential obstacle for Russell’s next pit window.

Over the next six laps, Antonelli closed to 1.4s off Hamilton, while Norris was just 1.6s off the other Mercedes. Leclerc was now 16.5s behind Russell, Piastri 23.4s.

This was, indeed, a critical point, because Piastri was lapping in the region of two tenths faster than Russell. So, if George were to pit, he would likely come out behind the second McLaren and would undoubtedly be the subject of a papaya team op.

So, it was a smart time to bring Hamilton in, given the gap between Piastri in P7 and Isack Hadjar in P8, since Russell was coming up to lap a gaggle of traffic: Esteban Ocon, Arvid Lindblad (on three-lap-old C2s), Gabriel Bortoleto and Carlos Sainz. Lewis emerged from his second stop, armed with new C3s, 2.9s behind Piastri on 13-lap-old C2s.

On lap 29, Hamilton breezed past the McLaren on the outside of Turn 3. F1 TV chose this moment to relay team radio with Dudley saying “Lewis is on a three. We are still racing Norris so we need to keep these laptimes going.”

But here Russell was coming under serious threat from Antonelli, who was snipping whole chunks of time from him by the lap – 0.4s here, 0.6s there. On lap 30 alone, as Russell laboured to pass the Lindblad-Bortoleto-Sainz train, Antonelli took 1.2s out of him.

In P5, Hamilton set the fastest lap of the race, a full three seconds faster. Russell’s race was very much going south. Come lap 31, Antonelli was within the one-second margin to qualify for overtake mode. Hamilton continued to make inroads.

Hamilton then got on the radio to race engineer Carlo Santi: “Let me know what I need to do.”

“20.9[s]. Charles in front, you are on a different strategy.”

Ferrari split the strategy between its drivers

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

Leclerc was indeed 2.6s in front, on 14-lap-old C2s, but of greater significance was the gap between Russell and Hamilton: from being 25.8s off the leader when he left the pits, he was now 18.1s. There was no way Russell could pit and emerge ahead of the Ferrari, should he stop now.

With 35 laps still to run, both cars would have to stop again – the question was how much Lewis could reduce the gap before he went back onto the C2s at his next stop. And of course, Leclec obligingly moved over for Hamilton at the beginning of lap 32.

A lap later, Antonelli tried to pass Russell into Turn 1, and George only just managed to resist. The Mercedes spent the next three laps at war, despite repeated instructions to Antonelli not to “slow each other down fighting”, and reminders that he had incurred three strikes for track limits and was now at risk of a 5s penalty.

Norris continued to appear to be Mercedes’ focus: “We need to keep that gap to Norris healthy,” Peter Bonnington reminded Antonelli.

At 4.6s, it was indeed relatively healthy. But behind, Hamilton continued to close: on lap 34 he took over two seconds out of Norris, closing to 2.4s off the McLaren – and 7.6s off leader Russell.

Norris then pitted at the end of lap 35 to get rid of his 21-lap-old C2s, prompting Mercedes to call Russell in next time around for what would be his second and final stop. But on lap 35, Hamilton had taken over 1.7s off the leader to come within 6.7s of him.

So, when Russell emerged, facing the prospect of 29 laps on his final set of C2s, Hamilton was on C3s which were just nine laps old – probably enough to last until the mid-teens. And he’d just taken 2.2s out of Antonelli to be 4.6s off the new race leader.

The gap between Hamilton and Russell at this point was 17s – not enough for Lewis to pit and be assured of coming out ahead, but not far off.

“This is our race, give everything these seven laps," 
Carlo Santi

“It won’t be long, Kimi,” Bonnington said on the radio. “We’ve got to cover Norris.”

Then at the end of lap 37, Antonelli broke for the pits, handing the lead to Hamilton.

“We run another seven laps on this set,” Santi told Lewis. “This is our race, give everything these seven laps – is the critical moment, we have our chance.”

Mercedes was still looking at Norris – and rightly so, since Lando set the fastest lap of the race when Antonelli pitted, leaving him just half a second off the Mercedes when Kimi emerged. But Hamilton had a relatively clear track ahead of him – just Pierre Gasly’s Alpine and then acres of clear air before he reached the backmarking Cadillac and Aston Martin of Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso.

Russell, conversely, had Lecerc 3s ahead of him and ready to make a nuisance of himself, plus Colapinto and Lindblad to lap.

Linblad obligingly broke for the pits at the end of lap 38 and Russell was able to set his fastest lap of the race, a 1m20.709s compared with the 1m21.360s just set by Hamilton. The gap was now 16.879s.

On lap 39, Russell cleared Colapinto in sector one and closed to 1.3s off Leclerc. Gasly was less co-operative than he could have been with Hamilton, only moving over at Turn 12 when he could have done so at Turn 10.

Russell then took advantage of having tyres 20 laps younger than Leclerc’s to sneak up the inside into Turn 12. It was a slower lap – 1m21.179s – but Hamilton had also lost time with Gasly, going round in 1m21.859s. The gap was now just over 16s.

Mercedes expected a closer fight between its drivers and Ferrari

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

“We are forecast to be battling Lewis at the end of the race on that three-stop,” Russell was told.

Hamilton was the first car on the scene as Alonso’s Aston Martin ground to a halt on the run up the hill to Turn 9, warranting a note from the stewards to check if he had observed the ensuing yellow flag – though the gap to Russell shrank to 15.7s. It wasn’t until Hamilton was crossing the line to start lap 41 that the yellow flag was upgraded to a virtual safety car.

That provided the opportunity for Hamilton to pit for a new set of C2s and emerge in the lead to the tune of 1.6s, rather than in fourth place behind Norris, who was 18.6s behind when the VSC was triggered. Verstappen in P5 was 31s behind (and, as it happened, also pitted under the VSC), so it would have to be a disastrous stop for Hamilton to have come out lower than P4 under green-flag conditions.

So, would Hamilton have won even without the VSC? That’s a tough call – before Alonso broke down, he had a clear track ahead of him apart from Perez, then another gap to Hadjar, so it’s reasonable to assume he would have been able to keep on pushing and established a bigger tyre-life offset before pitting, even if he rejoined behind Norris.

As it stood, in the final phase of the race he had tyres five laps younger than Russell’s, four laps younger than Antonelli’s, and six laps younger than Norris’s. Had the VSC not happened, the offset would be four or five laps greater.

Let’s assume Russell carried on taking half a second or so out of Hamilton over another five laps in green-flag conditions, and closed the gap to around 11s. That would have meant Lewis would emerge in the region of 12s down on Russell with 20-odd laps to go.

And although Hamilton would have needed to overtake Norris and perhaps Antonelli – a difficult one to figure, given his retirement with four laps to run – as well as Russell, his final victory margin of 19.5s suggests he had pace in hand. And this was with 25 laps rather than perhaps 20 to eke out of those C2s.

Around Barcelona, if you have half a second or so per lap pace advantage over another car you can usually pass. And that’s what Russell thought after the race.

“Obviously,” he mused, “Lewis probably would have come back through anyway, but without the virtual safety car, he would have pitted behind us.

“Who knows what would have happened? But yeah, I was just struggling towards the end of the stints…”