Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene has admitted that his team made the wrong decision by choosing a two stop strategy for Sebastian Vettel in Canada.
While race winner Lewis Hamilton stopped just once, making the ultra soft compound tyre last 24 laps, Vettel made two stops, potentially costing him his first win of the season.
"We overestimated the degradation on the tyres," Arrivabene said. "We called him in, it was the wrong decision."
While the decision is not the first mistake the team has made this season, the Italian blasted any suggestion that mistakes were getting the better of the team.
"You don't have to make the story bigger than what it is, today we make a mistake but in other races everybody [else], they make mistakes," he said.
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Bahrain International Circuit - Winter testing
Replies (2)
Login to replynicovanos
Posts: 61
I'm not so sure that is was actually the wrong call for Ferrari. I'm not sure that Vettel would have been able to maintain a one stop strategy like Hamilton. This pitstop did save some time.
mclarenfan1968
Posts: 1,027
The strategy was wrong. The softs were lasting quite long and Ferrari underestimated it. Rosberg couldn't get past Max just like Ricciardo couldn't get past Kimi. You need a huge differential in pace from fresh tyres like Vettel had on Max+Ricciardo to pull the overtake and make it stick. Vettel was pretty much 1-2 tenths quicker than Hamilton which was not enough given they both had to navigate traffic and lose time in-between. Had Vettel been out in-front Hamilton would have had no chance to pass Vettel who was equally quick. When vettel first pitted he really had no need to pit as his pace was better and he was increasing the gap on Hamilton once his tyres were warmed up.
This is becoming a habit at Ferrari, they truly have been clueless as to how the tyres can behave, mercs have won two races now due to Ferrari's strategy stupidity. Wonder what they are doing with all the handwork their drivers put in on Fridays and Saturdays to collect the tyre related data, safe to say the driver's efforts are being wasted by amateurs.