Mercedes: "Verstappen was saving his tires while fighting with Bottas"

During the Hungarian Grand Prix Max Verstappen was under pressure from Valtteri Bottas. Mercedes then made the choice to have Bottas stop again for the hard tire, to have a better chance of overtaking Verstappen. This strategy was similar to that of 2019, when they had Lewis Hamilton stop for fresh tyres, to attack Verstappen with fresh tyres.

In a video on the Youtube channel of Mercedes Andrew Shovelin, trackside engineer of Mercedes, explains what the goal of Mercedes was with the extra pit stop. "Bottas came behind Verstappen, but he didn't really have a chance to overtake him because the tyres were in equal conditions. You could see that Max was saving his tires while he was fighting with Valtteri".

"When we stopped Valtteri, Max suddenly went faster. So he had to go faster, because Bottas had more speed on the track. He had to go to the hard tire, because we had no other sets left". Because Bottas went to the hard tire, he could also push more. "That tire could have it if you were pushing several laps."

In the end Bottas was a few rounds short to really attack Verstappen. "I think if Bottas was behind Verstappen for a couple of laps, he could probably have caught up with Verstappen. However, he only got close to Max in the final laps, so it didn't work out for us this time", Shovelin concludes, looking back to 2019, where he did manage to catch up with Verstappen in the closing stages.