Lewis Hamilton has explained how Mercedes avoid the type of mistake Ferrari made with Charles Leclerc in qualifying.
The Monegasque was left stranded in the garage unable to respond as drivers improved their times in Q1 and ultimately pushed him down to 16th place on the grid for his home race.
Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto admitted it was a risk taken by the team to try and save tyres for the rest of the session but it would backfire in a big way and led to more questions about those on the pitwall.
“It’s really a formality. We sit down and we talk a lot the plan – even until going into Q3, we were talking about the timings and the preparation and what we were going to be doing," Hamilton explained.
“The communication is constant, that relationship is so, so important. We’ve got great, great people within our team that are just not making mistakes and they’re delivering on their word, as we are."
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The world champion does admit it is a situation that can happen all of sudden, however, as teams try to predict the performance of those around them.
“Sometimes it happens, you know. They’ll have a minimum time, the knock-out time, they’ll say the least time is this, and they’ll predict that the track is going to improve a certain amount," Hamilton continued.
“You go out, you do a lap, and they say you’re safe. My first lap, they said I was safe – but I could stay out and do more. I decided to stay out and better my time and see the track improve.
“In the past, I’ve been sat in the garage and they’re like 'we’re on the edge, we might go out again, we might not'.
“They chose to risk it. We don’t really take many risks like that.”
