No regrets from Ferrari drivers after staying out during VSC

Ferrari drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc both said they had no complaints about the team opting against pitting them under the virtual safety car as they lost touch with the Mercedes pair in the Australian Grand Prix.

Hamilton had caught the back of the lead battle between Leclerc and George Russell, with a three-way fight taking place when the VSC was required to clear Isack Hadjar’s car. Both Mercedes drivers immediately came into the pits, and Hamilton was questioning why Ferrari did not follow suit with at least one car, but he doesn’t believe it proved overly costly.

“I don't have mixed emotions about it,” Hamilton said. “We got a third and fourth. I think ultimately the Mercedes were quicker than us, and that's probably the maximum result we were going to get today.

“We'll definitely go and look and see whether stopping might have been better. I definitely thought, when I saw two Mercedes going in – one ahead of me, one behind me – I thought we should have come in, or at least one of us should have come in and covered. We'll have a look and see what we could have done better.”

Although Hamilton was vocal on team radio at the time, Leclerc was leading the race and eventually had to settle for third, but he says the decision to stay out was based on a potential later interruption that ultimately saw the pit lane closed to clear a stricken car.

“I don’t regret it,” Leclerc said. “It was a wanted choice, a wanted and conscious choice. Looking from FP1 to now, there’s been at every session a car that was stopped, at least one car. We knew that there were very high chances that this was not going to be the only VSC of the race, and so we thought that it was better for us to maybe wait for another one.

“That’s always a gamble, of course. We didn’t know that this would happen. The reality is we’ve had other VSCs after, and one which was particularly well placed, but unfortunately for this one for us the pit entry was closed and we couldn’t take it. So, we were a little bit unlucky on that side, but it was a conscious choice again and I don’t really regret it.”