"They should have intervened from lap one"

That Lewis Hamilton gained an advantage during the Bahrain Grand Prix by coming out of turn 4, most followers agree. How much advantage exactly is hard to say. According to Ho-Pin Tung there is more to it than just a faster racing line.

The Chinese-Dutch driver explains on Twitter that tyre wear is a serious problem on the Bahrain circuit by default. To keep the tyres alive a little longer every detail counts. Tung therefore thinks that Verstappen, for example, suffered from faster tyre wear due to the problems with his differential.

Saving tyres with wide racing line

But the violation of track limits by Lewis Hamilton also plays a role. "Hamilton drove Turn 4 like that because you have a lot of combined g-forces (lateral and acceleration at the same time) on the tyre there. And the bigger the radius, the less the load and temperature. One should have intervened from lap one."

In the closing stages, Lewis Hamilton was driving on eleven laps older tyres than Verstappen, but because Hamilton was still driving off-track during the first part of his final stint, Tung says it is difficult to say whether Hamilton's tyres were in such worse shape than Verstappen's in the final few laps.

Net #BahrainGP versneld teruggekeken. Benieuwd hoeveel invloed diff prob VER heeft gehad. Bahrein is namelijk laatste plek waar je diff prob wilt: maakt lange remzones en accelereren uit langzame bochten lastig, S1 & S3 in eindfase duidelijk zwak tov HAM terwijl S2 sterk was 1/4

— Ho-Pin Tung 董荷斌 (@hopintung) March 29, 2021