Something that the race coverage failed to notice (or perhaps I just missed their mention of it) is yet another example of how Merc is dropping the ball—specifically, how they failed to take advantage of a situation that would almost certainly have allowed them to gain a place from 6th to 5th in the final race results. Certainly they had to have been aware when it was announced in the latter stage of the race that Sainz was under investigation for an incident with Piastri and that a final ruling probably wouldn’t occur until after the race. As with any knowledgeable F1 fan, Merc should have then known that if penalized, Sainz would probably be assessed a 5 sec. penalty post-race. I’m just a race fan but even I then immediately began monitoring Lewis’ gap to Sainz, expecting that Merc would inform him of this possibility so that he could work to keep his gap to Sainz under 5 sec. For lap after lap Lewis had been keeping within DRS range (i.e., less than one sec.) of Checo and it appeared certain that he could have done so for that final lap also—if he had (Checo had closed to within just over 3 sec. behind Sainz), he would have finished less than 5 sec. behind Sainz and thus would have moved up to 5th when Sainz was penalized (as it was, he missed out by only .178 sec.). However, it appears that Merc never informed Lewis of the potential penalty to Sainz. So, apparently without this knowledge, Lewis (having found after so many laps within DRS range of Checo that his Merc lacked the straight line speed to pass Checo’s RB) Lewis knew that he wouldn’t be able to pass Checo on that final lap and thus decided to ease up a bit to ensure that he didn’t throw away his 6th place finish. It seems obvious that had he known about the possible penalty Lewis would have instead kept pressing to keep his gap to Sainz under 5 sec. It also seems obvious that had Merc informed him about it, they would have been urging him to keep pressing and kept him informed of what his gap to Sainz was—however, the race coverage that I watched made no mention of any such radio messages being sent to Lewis. The TV race coverage crew is typically very good about reporting significant radio messages to their audience so I’m just assuming that Merc never did inform Lewis of this possible penalty situation. While it’s possible that Merc did inform Lewis and the TV crew just failed to report it, it’s of relevance to note here that I haven’t seen anything in the various post-race reporting that indicates that Merc had informed Lewis. Yes, it’s just a matter of two probable points missed. However, even the casual fan knows that in F1 you fight hard for every available point. To put it mildly, Merc (and most notably their cars) have been considerably less than stellar over the past three seasons!
