We deserved more - Arrivabene
Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene was left to wonder what could have been at the Austrian Grand Prix, had things not gone completely wrong for Sebastian Vettel. The 49-year old Italian confirmed the team is still unsure what caused the spectacular tyre failure on Vettel's Ferrari.
Ferrari started the Austrian GP with high hopes even with the grid penalty for Sebastian Vettel. The Ferrari SF16-H proved to be a competitive machine on the Spielberg circuit and the drivers managed to qualify on the second softest compound in Q2, allowing them to stretch their first stints longer than those on the ultra soft tyres.
Vettel showed strong pace while leading the race before his first stop, but saw his challenge abruptly aborted in a dramatic tyre blow-up on the pit straight. Ferrari's team principal Arrivabene has requested a thorough investigation from tyre supplier Pirelli into the problem for which Vettel lost a possible podium.
“The result could have been better as Sebastian, today, would have finished very high on the podium without the tire failure.", Arrivabene said.
"It happened when he was leading the race and all of a sudden, with no prior warning, so the causes will have to be investigated together with Pirelli."
On the other side, the Italian was happy with Kimi Raikkonen who scored his fourth podium finish in 2016.
"As for Kimi, he scored another nice podium finish: we had split strategies between our drivers and both our data and his feedback showed that he could have come ahead of Verstappen in the last stages of the races, had it not been for the yellow flags which came out following Perez’s crash”.
