Mercedes director explains why Lewis Hamilton started the 2023 F1 Saudi Arabian GP on hard tires

Mercedes technical director Mike Elliot explained that Lewis Hamilton was given hard tires at the start of the 2023 F1 Saudi Arabian GP to take advantage of a safety car period. Lewis Hamilton was the only driver in the top 10 who opted to start the race on hard tires. Early on in the race, Hamilton struggled for pace and was then overtaken by both Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

However, with the help of the safety car, Lewis Hamilton was able to switch to medium tires and used them to jump the two Ferraris and finish the race in P5. In the Mercedes debrief, Mike Elliot spoke about why the team chose that path and revealed that it was aimed at taking advantage of a potential safety car in the race:

"For us looking at the strategy, we felt the Soft wasn’t going to be a great race tire. The two race tires were always going to be the Medium and the Hard on our car. So, the question was do we go Medium and then Hard on a one stop or do we go Hard then Medium? And, if we look at the results of the simulations, they said pretty much the same results statistically, that it didn’t really matter which tire we started on."

Speaking about their strategy, the team's technical director further added:

"But given where Lewis was starting from, we thought there was a potential gain we could make by fitting the Hard tire. If we got the Safety Car at the right time, a Safety Car that had come out just after the others had pitted on their Medium that would have really given an advantage to Lewis because he could have a much shorter effective pit stop time if he was able to stop under a Safety Car."

---

Lewis Hamilton jumped Leclerc and benefitted from the safety car period

Elliot pointed out that this was exactly what happened as Charles Leclerc pitted early, with Lewis Hamilton able to jump him during the safety car period:

"And as you can see with Leclerc, he had to pit earlier and pitting earlier before that Safety Car meant that he had to take the full stop time in his race time whereas all of those that had stayed out on the track on the harder tires had the advantage of being able to pit under the Safety Car. So, it wasn’t a huge amount in it, but we felt to us that that was a strategic gamble that was worth taking."

Subsequently, Lewis Hamilton made his way through the field to finish P5 in the race while Charles Leclerc finished the race in P7.