Vettel says three-stop strategy was wrong

The Ferrari driver, starting from sixth on the grid, looked like a strong favourite for victory after Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg crashed into each other.

But, unlike race winner Max Verstappen and teammate Kimi Raikkonen, Vettel opted to stop three times, a strategy that ended up being slower than two spots.

"We tried everything, so we tried to obviously get ahead in the end, but we were surprised by how superior the two-stop was," said Vettel, who finished third, 5.5 seconds behind Verstappen.

"You could see for Daniel and myself that a three-stop wasn't superior. I had an interesting race. They were quite competitive on medium tyres. They were more competitive in the third sector.

"With hindsight we decided the wrong way."

Vettel is convinced Ferrari was quicker than Red Bull on the soft tyres, but he admitted to be struggling with the mediums.

"In all honesty, the first laps I felt really good, then we just struggled on the medium compound," he added.

"The whole afternoon that was the slower tyre for us. In all fairness we were quicker than the Red Bulls on the softs, around half a second and on mediums same pace, not enough to create something.

"In the second stint you could see I was closing but not able to put Max under pressure."