Lewis Hamilton, Toto Wolff admit Ferrari better than Mercedes in Sochi

Russian GP

Hamilton, Wolff admit Mercedes strategy fail in Sochi

But the Silver Arrows still won!

Matthew Scott

Thursday 3 October 2019 10:00

Both Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff conceded that Mercedes had the wrong strategy at the Russian Grand Prix, despite getting the better of Ferrari to secure a one-two finish.

Hamilton had produced a superb lap to snatch a spot alongside Charles Leclerc on the front row, but Ferrari immediately shut them out as Leclerc towed Sebastian Vettel into the lead from P3.

However, Ferrari's race was played out to the backdrop of a team orders controversy and the team looking to manufacture a swap of positions after Vettel had refused to cede P1 to Leclerc.

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And things fell apart for the Scuderia when Vettel suffered an MGU-K failure immediately after pitting, which triggered a VSC period to give Hamilton the chance to pit and remain ahead of Leclerc, who finished third behind the Silver Arrows.

"Before the race we sat down and said our estimations, if the soft tyre will last or not, either we will be correct or they will be correct," Hamilton said of Mercedes' decision to start on mediums and look to run longer than Ferrari.

"I think ultimately they were right because the soft tyre was much stronger than we anticipated.

"Obviously there was that difference between the compounds so keeping up with the softs with their consistency and speed was so hard so I wasn't expecting that."

Despite trying the offset strategy, Wolff admitted Mercedes had expected to fall short.

"I think we would have gone onto the soft for the last 25 laps and been on a soft against the medium," he said.

"Realistically, you must say, I don't think it would have been enough. We would have followed them in the gearbox like in the last few races, but not enough.

"We need to be self-aware that on pure speed we didn't have the performance this weekend. And there's many areas which we which we need to work on in order to get our get our performance levels back."