i think it was clever of merc they played an obvouis fake pitstop , and then when they came out for hamiltons undercut williams didnt react
But Merc telepgraphed Hamilton's stop by telling him "box, box, box" at the start of his in-lap. It would be audacious of them to have a code where "box, box, box" actually meant stay out, especially when we have a technical directive banning coded messages. So it was clear they were stopping.
From Williams' point of view, stopping on the same lap as Merc was ideal, but stopping first would have been better than stopping second, so I've absolutely no idea why they waited. I can see why they didn't take the bait on lap 14, but by the time Hamilton pitted they were well into the 1-stop window.
Also interesting to read in the article that the regulation is "a little vague" according to Benson. I think it's clear enough, isn't it? And he points out that this sort of thing happened all the time 15 years ago. I remember what it was like then, and it was bloody dangerous.
Ferrari and Mclaren's boxes were adjacent to each other, and generally speaking, they would not be trying to dummy each other into stopping. Refuelling was allowed and fuel effect generally had a greater influence on laptime than deg, meaning times would fall as each stint wore on rather than increasing as they tend to now, plus the tyres of that era were not quick on the outlap. So there was no incentive to undercut anyone, and people generally only pitted when they were out of fuel.
The reason they would come out when they weren't stopping was because Mclaren and Ferrari's boxes were adjacent to each other, and they were positioning their people in the pit lane in order to stop the other team's drivers from driving through their box on the way into or out of their own box. Having to drive around the other team's mechanics always costs time. So Ferrari's front left wheelman would be kneeling on the concrete operating as a human apex of a corner that the Mclaren would have to get around in order to stop in its box. And the Mclaren driver would know that the fella was only there in the hope of costing him the race. Races would often be decided at the stops and every half a tenth counted, so they would leave no margin in getting around these people. I seem to remember Mclaren pulling this trick in 1999 at Silverstone, and Irvine overshot his marks and lost the race (which ultimately could have been the difference that cost him the WDC). He said after the race that he'd misjudged it because it had been the first time in the whole weekend that Mclaren had been out in the pitlane when he was coming in. But anyway, it was brutal and dangerous and it needed to be reigned in.
By comparison, the "dummy" manoeuvre is relatively harmless, but there is a clear rule. And admitting that it was a dummy, rather than a late reversal of an initial decision to pit on lap 14, is brazen. I was surprised to hear Wolff admitting to that on television.
Edited by redreni, 07 July 2015 - 16:50.