Ferrari play down strategy error

The winter was full of hopes that Ferrari had closed the gap to Mercedes during testing.

It was clear they had done, but probably not by enough to challenge them on raw pace.

This proved to be the case in qualifying on Saturday, but it was a different story in the race on Sunday.

An especially slow start from Lewis Hamilton was jumped on by not only team-mate Nico Rosberg but also the Ferrari duo of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.

But while Rosberg’s start wasn’t as bad as Hamilton’s, neither was it as good as the Ferrari’s who from the second row of the grid took a one-two lead during the opening stages of the race.

Right up until the red flag it looked like it was Ferrari’s race to lose and that they did.

Firstly, a strategy error by Ferrari appeared to show that they were desperate to avoid using the medium compound tyre, a tyre that Pirelli had designed so that it could last longer distances.

Mercedes chose to go on this tyre and race until the end, Ferrari however opted for a more aggressive strategy and run the super-soft tyres, an option which would require at least one more pit-stop, which would require a lead of 24 seconds to control the race.

However Vettel’s pace wasn’t good enough to do this and that handed the victory to Rosberg, whilst a mechanical problem saw Kimi retire.

‘We need to look at the data in the garage, because every car has different consumption, different degradation, to be certain if we were right.

‘To be certain if we were wrong, is a nonsense. We need to look at the data on the car and then collect it.’ Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene told motorsport.com.

Arrivabene’s post-race comments seem to suggest that Ferrari had no thought to running the remainder of the race without a pit-stop and if that was the case then Ferrari probably maximised the best from their car.