In the immediate aftermath of the Belgian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton questioned why he wasn't afforded the same one-stop strategy that helped team-mate George Russell win the race.
It wasn't just Hamilton's side of the Mercedes garage that was caught out by the one-stopper suddenly being on the table, as in the top 10 only Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso followed suit.
The Spa-Francorchamps race was F1 at its unpredictable best, with Mercedes turning around a tough weekend to claim a - temporary - one-two, and the great McLaren versus Max Verstappen battle for the win never materialising.
The race played out very differently to what people up and down the paddock had been expecting. It was thought that on the partially resurfaced layout tyre degradation would be higher than in previous years, bumping the ideal strategy up to a two-stopper on medium-hard-hard compounds.
That would also help overtaking remain easier than on most circuits, meaning teams weren't particularly alarmed by getting undercut by the car in front during pitstops because they thought their drivers could re-pass rivals on fresher tyres.
But after rain on Saturday limited dry-weather running, both the teams and tyre manufacturer Pirelli were completely blindsided by the lack of wear on the hard compound, which suddenly brought a one-stopper – which Pirelli predicted would be "off the table" – back into play.
Adding to the small gaps between teams, the shortened DRS zone on the Kemmel straight and the ever-worsening dirty air effect, minimal tyre degradation made overtaking a lot harder and keeping track position much more crucial than expected.
In the closing stages Hamilton couldn't get past Russell on much fresher tyres, while Oscar Piastri quickly bridged the gap but got stuck behind both.
Piastri's team-mate Lando Norris also had more pace on his hards than Max Verstappen on the much less durable mediums, but couldn't find a way past in the battle for fifth.
So if clear air was king, as Piastri pointed out to his race engineer, then why didn't he or other drivers follow Russell's lead?
"Yes, we considered that," McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained. "We were not adamant that it was going to work.
"For us it was pretty extreme, because if you commit to this and it doesn't work, you can probably screw up a race day. It can become very, very painful because then it's too late to pit and therefore you may lose a lot of positions."
Stella conceded McLaren is more risk averse as it fights Red Bull in the constructors' championship, and suggested Russell, who looked set to finish fifth at best, had less to lose.
"In Russell's position, there was potentially more motivation to take a risky approach, but we want to think slightly more robustly," he said.
"We need to be a little cautious with adventurous strategies, which in hindsight actually proved to be good. We scored again higher than Red Bull. We are now [42] points behind."
"The plan with Lando was robust [too], it's just that we were a little surprised that we could not overtake. Verstappen made the mediums last in the final stint like not many other drivers managed to do."
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, who moved up to third in the final results, was also tempted to go long at the first round of pitstops before settling for a more conventional strategy.
"It was one of our plans," said Leclerc. "But I knew that it was very, very unlikely for me to do so.
"When you are in front, to get undercut by three, four cars you just lose so many positions if the one-stop doesn't work. It was just better to align ourselves with the guys behind.
"I think [Mercedes] just had more pace so they made the one-stop work because they were super, super strong."
And at the time of Leclerc's decision, hard-starting team-mate Carlos Sainz hadn't completed enough laps yet for Ferrari to realise just how durable the hard compound would prove to be.
"The main issue is that you start with medium and you have to take this decision lap 11 when everybody's pitting and you have no clue about the zero degradation of the hard," team boss Fred Vasseur added.
"It was very difficult to imagine that you'll do 35 laps in Spa [on one set of tyres]."
That sentiment was echoed by Max Verstappen, who could well have used a one-stop to salvage a good result from starting 11th after his grid penalty.
Verstappen and team-mate Sergio Perez had just one set of hard tyres and two sets of the less desirable mediums available, the opposite of the teams around them.
In theory, that would have made a one-stop more appealing, but the Dutchman felt his RB20 wasn't kind enough on its tyres to make it work.
"We were on two mediums and a hard. I think [another] hard tyre would have helped," he said. "Of course, George won the race on a one-stop, but I don't think we had the tyre wear or tyre life to do that anyway."
Team boss Christian Horner added: "All the data from Friday pointed towards graining, high degradation and it was actually the complete inverse where a one-stop won the race, so I don't think anybody could have envisaged that."
"I don't think George set off in that race expecting to do a one-stop. But congratulations to him and Mercedes for making it work, because I don't think even they thought it was potentially going to work at one point."
