ringo wrote:Vettels strategy could have worked. He carried to gap down to a little over 4 seconds with about 20 laps to go. He was chipping away pretty nicely until he gad those offs on the final corner.
If he had been a little more conservative and kept the gap coming down he woyld have eventually caught Lewis.
Seb had some part to blame in the plan not working as planned. It definitely seemed like the fastest strategy. The biggest challenge would have been overtaking Lewis.
I think you're half right.
Sure, if he could keep the gap coming down at half a second a lap, as it was at the beginning of the stint, he would have caught Hamilton with 10 laps to go. It's unlikely he would have passed though, as even at Canada, half a second a lap is not really enough to pass.
On the other hand, it was clear that his tyres were rapidly catching Hamilton's in terms of wear - the gap had stopped coming down at 0.5 a lap, and started coming down at 0.2 to 0.3 a lap. I think the mistakes were simply a symptom of Vettel having to push super hard to try and get the gap to come down at the rate required.
Ultimately, I don't think it was Vettel that really caused any issue, it was the strategy. Even without the mistakes, he'd not have been able to get the gap down. If they'd simply maintained track position over Merc, they would have won. He would have been under a lot of pressure towards the end, but I think he'd have hung on.