Jef Patat wrote:seinfeld wrote:No one talking about how they told Ricciardo. Default 13 maintain 2 second gap 1/3rd into a race for?
The fact that it happened doesn't surprise me, the fact that it happened so early in the race does.
It's not like Ricciardo was faster than Vettel or anything...
I mean, he was asked to drop to two seconds but at the end of that stint he was already 5.8 behind Seb. He couldn't even maintain the gap he was asked to.
Also, in case you forgot it, Vettel was asked to maintain the gap with Rosberg and look after his tyres too. Difference is, Vettel could still follow Rosberg, whereas Ricciardo was losing ground to them.
http://en.mclarenf-1.com/index.php?page ... 915&graf=3
Daniel closed the gap at the start of the second stint because he pitted first, but Vettel had already shown better pace up until that point and was pulling away again 0.3-0.4 per lap in that stint. Vettel was pushing to try an undercut to Rosberg in the second pit stop, and Daniel couldn't follow.
To let Daniel push harder when the gap was steadily increasing with Vettel, and Fernando was a threat behind him (already made the undercut in the first pit stop, but Daniel took his place back), would be stupid. He was going to need that fuel and those tyres later, as we clearly saw.
When Daniel started saving fuel in the third stint Fernando closed the gap very quickly and he almost lost his place to the Spaniard for the second time.
Then he had that pit stop problem, but it was already very close between him and Alonso because he overused his resources trying to follow Seb and Rosberg.