Ferrari defends Dutch GP strategy after Lewis Hamilton criticism

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has defended his team's questionable strategy decisions at the Dutch Grand Prix after both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc voiced their frustrations.

Having extended his first stint, Hamilton had a significant tyre delta over Leclerc when he came steaming up behind his team-mate at a rate of around one second per lap. Rather than pull Leclerc aside, Ferrari initially sought to pit the Monegasque, but instead left him out for a further lap, costing Hamilton valuable time, before pulling him in the next time around. 

This was later followed by a suggestion from the pit wall that Hamilton should switch to medium tyres, but when asked by the seven-time champion whether it would be the fastest option, the response was inconclusive. Audibly frustrated, Hamilton demanded that the team find the answer as they 'have all the data'.

"We didn't want to tell him the strategy at this stage, because we didn't want to disclose to the competitors that we wanted to keep him on track until the end," said Vasseur. 

"If he was able to keep Antonelli behind him, and I think that would have been the right call. And Charles was supposed to pit, and we extended one lap, and that was a kind of confusion, but I'm not worried about this type of thing. 

"Everybody will be back in the debriefing, and they will have a clear picture about the race. 

"Charles also was a bit frustrated at one stage about the compound, but the compound that I think everybody was a bit lost about the compounds. The first two, they started with medium on the first start, then they moved to soft, and the difference between the three compounds was very marginal today, and it was difficult to have a clear picture on the strategy. It means that sometimes you have to change the strategy or adapt, because we are trying to learn from the others also, and for them, it's a bit frustrating, but they will understand."

Hamilton eventually finished the Zandvoort race in fourth place, missing out on the podium by less than a second - a margin far less than the time lost by following Leclerc during the pit stop phase. But the timing of Leclerc's stop also left him in a difficult spot, with a long final stint that, had it not been for a late virtual safety car intervention, could have seen him tumble down the order. 

Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, Vasseur conceded that he would handle some elements of the race differently if he could hit the reset button. 

"You can always say after the race that you could have been better to do it like this or this," he added. 

"The story is that when Lewis came back on Charles, we were expecting him to pit, and then we had someone in the shadow of the car when we asked him to do one lap more. You can't ask him to do one lap more and to swap position in the middle of the straight line; it's not so easy.

"But still, yeah, if I have a look at the race now, they can do it differently."