"You do the strategy, I’ll do the driving" - F1 pundit sees concerning change in Mercedes' strategy for Lewis Hamilton during 2022 F1 Miami GP

Lewis Hamilton's late-race team radio exchange pretty much took place in front of the public. The Mercedes driver questioned his team engineer on the prospects of pitting during the safety car period, only to opt against the strategy.

Speaking about the situation, Ted Kravitz stated that there seems to be confusion in the way the strategy calls are being carried out for Hamilton.

In his Sky Sports segment, "The Notebook," Kravitz said:

"There was a bit of confusion under the Safety Car for a possible second stop onto the soft tyres. [It was] probably right in the end that they didn’t do it because it would have been difficult to overtake even on the soft tyres and even if he had, he probably would have only overtaken George Russell.

"I thought it was interesting there was the confusion. Has there been a sea change in Hamilton directing strategy in the way we saw him do last year?"

He continued:

"Has he thought ‘do you know want, I’ve learned from last year – sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, I’ll just leave it to James Vowles and the strategists to get on? You do the strategy, I’ll do the driving’.

"But we’ll see if that’s something about the mindset that’s changed now they are not fighting for wins and he just wants to leave it up to the team, or whether he was going to do that if they were fighting for wins."

There is no way of knowing if this is actually the case, but the Mercedes strategy unit has been found wanting even in the past as well.

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That’s what your job is, make the decision for me: Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton did not make too much of a fuss about his situation in the interviews afterward. However, he emphasized that it is the role of the race engineer to make the decision in such scenarios.

Hamilton said:

“That’s what your job is, make the decision for me – you’ve got all the details, I don’t. That’s what you rely on the guys for but today they gave it to me and I don’t understand it, but anyways…

“Just a bit unfortunate with the Safety Car but at least we got points today, we are finishing, reliability is good. I’m excited to, at some stage, take a step forward, which we haven’t yet.”

This was Lewis Hamilton's fourth loss on the trot against his teammate George Russell this season.