Phil wrote:Maybe we would have seen better times if Hamilton hadn't been stuck behind traffic for most of the race and then on a strategy that meant he had to make his mediums work for ~39 laps. Same for Rosberg, he too was limited by most of Ferrari's pace and by the time he was in clear air, he too was on a strategy that meant he needed to conserve his tires. Though I still think that the pace on mediums was very very impressive directly compared to the Ferrari of Vettel.
Vettel pulled away easily by 7 sec. before the red flag. But stopping the race meant it all went to waste.
And as for the 2nd stint on SS, Vettel needed to extend that as much as possible to make the third stint on S possible and not be forced to use M so there was a great deal of tyre management, he was basically nursing the tyres. On his final couple of laps of that stint he was actually quite a bit slower than Rosberg due to worn out tyres. Now on 3rd stint on S he was absolutely flying catching Rosberg by more than 1sec a lap.
Besides, Vettel stopped 1 time more than Rosberg and lost 7 sec. of advantage due to red flag, yet he finished only 9.6sec. later than Rosberg and probably lost those 2.6sec due to crappy last pitstop (not to mention his venture offtrack). Magic!