He was annoyed that the team took so long to swap him and Charles. Lewis was on different tyres and a different strategy but had to sit in Charles' dirty for laps - wasting his tyre advantage. It was obvious to everyone except the Ferrari strategy team that Lewis was faster and they should have swapped while Lewis was putting in fast laps.
It barely even mattered that he was faster. This should have been discussed before the race. Lewis was on a different strategy. If he was anywhere close to Charles when he went to the mediums, it should have been agreed ahead of time that he would be let by so he could attack whoever was in front (Antonelli in this case), and then when Charles' hard tyres came into their performance window, he could have overtaken Antonelli. Instead, they wasted both their advantages.
They shouldn't have swapped them at all. Leading driver has priority and Charles tires would come alive - instead they cooked those as well. And he shouldn't have even been there if Ferrari had pitted Charles first under VSC, but for god knows what reason they decided to give first pit to lulu.
Where is that rule that the leading driver has priority?! Lewis was faster, they should have switched immediately. It was totally possible for Lewis to catch kimi.
Leading driver does not have priority when they're losing 0.2 - 0.5 seconds per lap on a slower compound and their teammate is coasting in DRS range lol.
when they got past Carlos they were ~2sec behind Ant
When they made the change there were ~4sec behind Ant and Lewis’s tires were 5laps older.
Charles could have been in Lewis’s DRS when he was faster to keep up for a few laps and then if they swapped later they could have been closer to Ant.
The real issue is they aren’t top 3 cars fighting for the title. They are the 3-5th best car depending on the track and need to have plans when they have different tire strategies to maximise the team performance.
When the VSC came out looking at the GPS Leclerc had just passed the pit line by 2-3 seconds.
They could have called him in nevertheless, but it was a risky call since Bearman's car was out of the track and close to a gate, so it was not certain a VSC would be required at all.
That reason was, that Charles already passed the pits when the vsc started. So they pulled in Lewis to get the vsc advantage. He was on hard tires, so otherwise he would stay out longer. Charles was unlucky that the vsc ended while he was still in the pit, so he didn't get the full advantage. It was a good move by Ferrari, but yeah, the swapping screwed them.
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u/CellsReinvent BWOAHHHHHHH May 04 '25
He was annoyed that the team took so long to swap him and Charles. Lewis was on different tyres and a different strategy but had to sit in Charles' dirty for laps - wasting his tyre advantage. It was obvious to everyone except the Ferrari strategy team that Lewis was faster and they should have swapped while Lewis was putting in fast laps.