Ferrari commented on its decision not to pit during the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) periods at the Formula 1 Australian GP, which ultimately contributed to losing the victory to Mercedes.
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The first VSC occurred on lap 11, following the engine failure of Red Bull Racing’s Isack Hadjar, and Mercedes immediately took the opportunity to pit George Russell, amidst the intense duel with the Ferrari cars of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. Shortly after, Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas also stopped on track, triggering a second VSC, but the Italian team kept its drivers on track, forcing them to make their stops under green flag conditions.
Despite the strategic choice, which cost positions in the final result, Leclerc finished third and Hamilton fourth, Fred Vasseur, Ferrari team principal, downplayed the importance of this decision in the defeat and pointed to Mercedes’ pure pace as the determining factor.
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“We have to be realistic, they (Mercedes) were eight-tenths faster than us yesterday. We struggled a lot at the start of the race,” Vasseur told the press. “Now, at that stage of the race, no one expected to do just one stop. We were also surprised by the durability of the tires. We could have done 300 laps today,” he said.
Vasseur highlighted that the problem was not the strategy, but rather the superiority of the German team’s car: “Mercedes’ pace was better than ours. Even when they pitted, they maintained about a four-tenth advantage over us and sustained that performance across all stints. We might have pushed a bit more at the beginning, but I have no regrets regarding the strategy or the pace today. We took a decent step compared to yesterday and now we will focus on China,” the Frenchman concluded.
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