...everyone started on softs. I expected them to go with mediums since several other cars were having success on them, so maybe they thought they could to to the end of the race on them? At that point in the race, the odds of hards lasting that long was somewhere between slim and none. They were losing a second a lap on the hard tires.

Lucky for them both Red Bull cars DNFed. I think Lewis was going to pass Checo at the end anyway, even with that extremely poor pit strategy.

If I was running the Mercedes team, I would take the decisions out of Toto's hands for one race to see how it goes. Let the team leads take in all of the inputs, then let them make the pit decisions for their cars.

Mercedes had a bunch of head-scratching pit decisions last year too, so this isn't new.