“I think I made a mistake”
Sebastian Vettel has admitted he was wrong to question Ferrari’s strategy during the German Grand Prix.
The four-time champion refused to pit when told to by his team, insisting his tyres were still in good shape. Ferrari had wanted to him to pit earlier for his final stop to attempt the undercut on Max Verstappen but Vettel said on team radio the Red Bull driver was “miles away” at the time.
However Vettel said he has now realised that it would have been worth pitting sooner as the Ferrari’s pace was better on fresh tyres.
“I’ve looked at that now and I think I made a mistake because we could have had a chance at putting the cars in front under some more pressure,” he said. “We were obviously not so great at the end of the stints, struggling a bit with the tyres, and obviously I didn’t want to make the last stint too long for that reason, so I think it was too conservative.”
Vettel played down the apparent mutiny and added: “We were talking about it for a long time. I don’t know how much [audio] got broadcast.”
It was another tough race for Ferrari as Vettel and team-mate Kimi Raikkonen finished fifth and sixth and were some way off the pace of the Red Bulls.
“We struggled a little bit to get the balance right and the car was arguably sliding a little bit too much, which cost us a bit of life on the tyres and performance at the end of the stint,” Vettel said.
“To sum it up, we just were not quick enough today.”
Ferrari suffered another blow last week when it was announced that technical director James Allison would leave the Italian team.