Red Bull strategy backfires

29/07/2012

Mat Coch writes:

The wrong strategy cost Red Bull dearly in the Hungarian Grand Prix with neither driver able to make the most of their cars' potential.

"Strategy wise it wasn't easy for us," lamented Webber after the race. "We tried to roll the dice a little bit to pick people off at the end of the race if they got in trouble with their tyres. In the end they weren't and that wasn't enough for us to jump back ahead of them.

"I think we did a lot of good things at the start of the grand prix, we probably would have stuck to a two stopper."

It was a similar situation for Vettel. "From the strategy point of view the biggest loss was that we got stuck behind Jenson," said the German. "He was very slow in comparison to Lewis and we lost too much there - we couldn't pit either because the guys in the back were still too close.

"I think we did what we could today and tried something with the strategy. It could have been a different picture with a couple of laps more but it's one of those things."

Webber's race was more disappointing given the Australian lost ground to Fernando Alonso, who now heads the championship by forty points. With nine races remaining the lead is not insurmountable, though Webber feels improvements must be made.

"We just got to stop the friendly fire," he said. "Yesterday was my fault in qualifying but we've had some instances before that where we need to just keep doing better, and that's how this team operates."

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