Vettel says he was wrong to overrule team strategy

It was another unremarkable race for Ferrari, with Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen racing at a fair distance from rivals Red Bull, let alone Mercedes.

Vettel  got the better of his team mate at the start of his home event and pretty much lingered in fifth position for most of the afternoon in a race which once again underlined the Scuderia's crucial lack of competitive pace.

"Racing at home is always something special, and in that regard it wasn’t a special race," Vettel conceded.

"We struggled a little bit to get the balance right and the car was sliding a little bit too much, which cost us life on the tyres and ultimately performance at the end of the stint. To sum it up we were not quick enough today."

Perhaps the defining moment for the German came on lap 45 when he overruled his own team, refusing to pit for fresh rubber, claiming his tyres were good while his strategists on the pit wall, armed with accurate and comparable data, argued for a stop and possible undercut.

"Who are we going to undercut?" Vettel responded on the radio. "They are miles ahead!"

In retrospect however, Vettel believes he was probably wrong to overrule his own team.

"I just had a look at that now and I think I did a mistake because we could have had a chance to put the cars in front under more pressure.

"But we were talking about it a long time in the race, I don’t know how much it was broadcasted or not, but yeah as I said before we were obviously not so great at the end of the stints and struggling a bit with the tyres.

"Obviously I didn’t want to make the last stint too long for that reason. Arguably I was too conservative.

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