Mercedes reveal why they double-stacked Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas during Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Mercedes have shed some light on their decision to double-stack drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Speaking in a video on their YouTube channel, Mercedes engineers James Allison and Andrew Shovlin dissected their gamble to bring Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas in soon after the Safety Car was brought out following Mick Schumacher's early crash:

"We'd highlighted before the race that the hard tire was just the best tire... that tire could do 40 laps of the race without question. Now, with the Safety Car appearing when it did on that early lap, you can go till the end of the race. You don't have to incur another pit-stop loss. There was going to be nearly zero degradation on that tire. So, it made absolute sense to stop, unless you thought there was going to be a red flag. But that's gambling."

The gamble didn't look like it would pay off initially with the race being halted shortly after Mercedes' double-stack. Verstappen would get the benefit of a free tire change under the red flag after inheriting the lead from Hamilton when the Briton went into the pits:

"Had the red flag not come out, I'm fairly sure (Max) Verstappen would never have been able to pull away from our two drivers or perhaps even some of the other drivers like (Charles) Leclerc that had stopped and also fitted the hard tire. He would have struggled. That medium tire would have just degraded and with more and more instances and more and more Safety Cars that perhaps would have bunched up the pack, he would have suffered a little bit more as a result of it."

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Lewis Hamilton initially doubted the call to switch to hard tires

Lewis Hamilton was a tad skeptical about being on the hard tires at the restart of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. The 7-time world champion saw his title rival Max Verstappen take to the grid in yellow mediums and questioned the team's decision on the radio.

When Verstappen managed to pull off a stellar move on the inside to slingshot from 3rd to 1st, Hamilton's fears seemed to compound.

However, the able engineers and technicians at Mercedes did have everything under control and their predictions of Verstappen's tires fading proved they had the right strategy call all along. Both Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas ended up on the podium, much to the delight of Toto Wolff.