Ferrari explain Mercedes defeat strategy call

Fred Vasseur has explained Ferrari's decision not to pit either car during a virtual safety car period during the Australian Grand Prix.

On Lap 11, Isack Hadjar suffered an engine failure aboard his Red Bull, triggering the virtual safety car, with Mercedes immediately pitting George Russell, who had been engaged in a race-long duel with the two Ferrari machines of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton for the lead.

Soon after, Valtteri Bottas stopped at the pit entry in his Cadillac with a second VSC being deployed, but again, Ferrari did not pit either car, meaning both its drivers were required to complete their stops under green flag conditions.

This dropped Leclerc to third and Hamilton to fourth in the end results as Russell and Kimi Antonelli recorded a one-two for Mercedes.

Reacting to the decision not to pit under the virtual safety cars, potentially costing the team a shot at the win, Vasseur felt that this was not a factor in the defeat, whereas the underlying pure pace of the SF-26 compared to the W17, was.

"We have to be realistic with this, they were eight-tenths faster than us yesterday, we fight like hell at the beginning,” Vasseur explained to media, including RacingNews365.

"Now I think at this stage of the race, nobody was expecting to be one stop. We targeted the optimum for us, and the optimum was to extend. We were also surprised by the life of the tyres. I think we could have done 300 laps today.

"But it is like it is, I think Mercedes still had, during the race, a delta of performance with us. The issue is not the strategy or the core; it's just the pure pace.

"I think the pace of Mercedes was better than ours. Even when they pitted, they were there or four-tenths faster than us, and they kept this pace all the stint.

"Ok, probably we were able to fight a little bit more at the beginning, but perhaps pushing a bit more on the tyres, and I have no regrets on the strategy, no regrets on the pace of today. 

"We did a decent step compared to yesterday, and let's be focused on China."