It is unusual for any Formula 1 boss to openly admit their team have made an error; and from Ferrari’s Maurizio Arrivabene – any Ferrari team principal, for that matter – it is rarer than most.
But after the Canadian Grand Prix, there was no mistaking Arrivabene’s message when he was asked about the fateful strategy decision that probably cost Sebastian Vettel victory in the Canadian Grand Prix. “We overestimated the degradation of the tyres. This is the reason we called him in. It was the wrong decision.” Arrivabene said
It has been a baffling begin to the season for Ferrari, who have talked themselves up – and been talked up by Mercedes – yet, before the weekend in Montreal, had just complimented to delude.
Around the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, however, they at long last resembled the genuine article.
Vettel passed up a great opportunity for post position by under 0.2 seconds, and must be content with third on the lattice behind Mercedes team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. Be that as it may, he was idealistic of a nice race, and his rankling begin made a win look on.
It was the kind of begin that shaped the legend of one of Ferrari’s greatest saints, Gilles Villeneuve, back in the late 1970s and mid ’80s – on a totally distinctive scale than each other car on the matrix.
The new standards presented for the current year, limiting the help drivers can get from both the pit divider and in the car, have made this kind of dissimilarity conceivable once more.
Hamilton is enduring toward one side of the range; Vettel profiting at the other. What’s more, in Canada, the four-time champion got off the line as though fueled by a rocket, and was past both Mercedes inside 100 meters or thereabouts.
From that point, he attempted to run the begin of the race as he did in his Red Bull days – assemble a speedy lead with a rankling first couple of laps and after that hold it, squeezing out the tires, avoiding his adversaries at all costs.
Hamilton confessed to being inspired by the Ferrari’s underlying pace, yet a quickest lap by the best on the planet on lap three made it clear it would not be that simple. What’s more, from that point Hamilton was serenely ready to sit inside 1.5 seconds of the Ferrari – the littlest edge a driver can permit before gambling destroying the delicate Pirelli tires.
Still, track position is basic in F1, particularly between cars that are generally equally coordinated, even on a circuit on which surpassing is as normal as it is in Montreal.
