Lewis Hamilton said Mercedes received his strategy call at Silverstone after Red Bull team principal Christian Horner questioned his strategy.
Horner claimed that when Hamilton’s team patted him on lap 33 of 52, the Ferrari had been “off the hook” by Mercedes for putting on hard tires instead of soft ones.
However, Hamilton is not convinced by Horner’s assessment of his strategy. “I don’t really care, I really don’t pay much attention to what that guy said,” he laughed when asked by RaceFan today.
“But from our knowledge, from what I was told, from our experience, the tires weren’t going away. They were definitely faster for the first part but there was a huge drop in the other cars we looked at.
“Now, did we get it right? Who knows. But I think we made the right decision.”
Hamilton was able to put pressure on Ferrari in the race by taking a long start on the medium tire compound. Only Lando Norris ran ahead of him on medium tyres, and the McLaren driver also used hard rubber on his pit stop.
“Nobody could do the length that I did on Medium,” Hamilton explained. “I don’t know if anyone else completed that length and had that performance and speed at the end on that tire.
“The question is, could I keep going and then shorten my soft tire run? But in the end it’s always positive.”
Mercedes can draw a lot of impetus from its British Grand Prix performance, said Hamilton, who set the fastest lap in the race to finish third.
“It was really positive for us as a team to start seeing a little bit of consistency, especially from my side, and to see us make progress,” he added.
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2022 Austrian Grand Prix
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