My guess is that Ferrari pit wall knew that overtaking a Mercedes here was impossible even with SS instead of S tyre, so they went for the most safe strategy in order to avoid the remote eventuality of an unannounced cliff.Vanja #66 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2017 1:24 pmdans79, thanks for that analysis, I did a similar one for another forum (different reasons though) and I didn't have the data for first lap differences (I assumed 0.7s from one car to another), though I see that it was bigger from Ham to Rai and Ver. This is my graph:
http://i63.tinypic.com/2uj0zy9.jpg
I believe Hamilton felt the pressure and thought that his tyres were gone before they actually were. Look at the lap time drop Max had before he pitted. Also, I think both Kimi and Vettel could have gone for a few more laps, Vettel would have had even bigger advantage by then. The only thing I don't understand is why those two haven't chosen super softs instead of softs, like Max.
I would have risked SS on Raikkonen anyway, in order to put pressure on Bottas