Hi Keith,
One of those decisions that if it had worked all would have been great but it didn't.
We had an intense rain contact in force that was going to affect the whole track from 1727hrs until 1757hrs. The cars went to the grid at 1700hrs on slicks and changed to wets immediately they got to the grid positions.
This rain contact was part of an 18 mile wide Cumulo Nimbus(Cb) and they are notorious for changing shape very quickly which unfortunately, for us, it did. The warning of the rain changed at 1720hrs to a ten minute period of very light rain from 1730 hours (the green light came on at 1735 and the race started at 1735 hrs [tour de france] ) and the decision was then dry (slick) tyres (they only have the two types of tyres so no inters). This change of rain warning went out at again at 1728hrs by telephone and data link and the 4 teams were told again and I was surprised by the fact they had not changed to slicks. About half of the cars pitted on the formation lap to go to slicks and the rest a few laps later. It was one of those things which, if it had worked on the day, Audi would have probably had all eight cars in the points.
It was a gamble in the last few minutes before the start and in fact the light rain warning from 1730 (from five minutes before the start was extended to 50 minutes with heavier rain after that. There has to be winners and equally there has to be losers and, on this one, Mercedes were the winners.
