Why a slower Ferrari is beating a faster Mercedes

A tit-for-tat game of strategy had played out on the pit wall during the opening pit stops, but from the cockpit of car No.5 it felt as though Bottas -- now on fresher, more durable tyres and closing fast -- had him at "checkmate". It would be an honourable defeat - the Mercedes had emerged as the faster car after all - but still a frustrating one.

"I think I came on the radio with about 10 laps to go and said 'I have everything under control'," Vettel said. "I don't know if they broadcast that but it was a lie; there was nothing under control! I thought that was checkmate."

"When they told me the pace of Valtteri at that time, there was no way I could do that. I was making the maths inside the car with 10 laps to go and at that pace he was going to catch me!"

A game of high-speed chess

Vettel and Bottas both started the race on a two-stop strategy but their respective teams switched to one stops as the race progressed. Vettel pitted at the end of lap 18, which by chance was the exact same lap Mercedes had calculated would work best to try and undercut the Ferrari with a pit stop of their own. The Mercedes crew were ready for the Finn when Vettel came into the pits and in a last-minute decision switched to Plan B by instructing Bottas to stay out for another three laps to switch on to a one stopper. At this stage, Vettel's pace was still consistent with a two-stop but when the Ferrari pit wall got wind saw Bottas take on medium tyres it knew that the Mercedes would go to the flag. Vettel still held track position at the front of the field but he would sacrifice it by making his planned second stop. At this point the possibility of one-stop started to be considered.

At first it seemed like a crazy idea. Vettel was on the soft compound tyre which Ferrari had only pushed as far as 17 laps in Friday practice, meaning the remaining 22 he needed to see the chequered flag would be a complete unknown. The most anybody expected to get from that soft compound on Sunday was 32 laps, with the risk of severe degradation increasing at a multiplying rate every lap after that.

Bottas, meanwhile, was on a set of the more durable medium tyres that were three laps younger and well suited to the Mercedes, which has always excelled on harder compound tyres. If he pushed hard he would be able to close in on Vettel towards the end of the race and have a chance at passing the Ferrari when it was at its most vulnerable on worn tyres. A one-stop looked like a losing strategy, but if Vettel had gone ahead with his planned second pit stop he would come out behind both Mercedes and have just 15 to 20 laps to fight his way back past. Not an easy task either.

Checkmate ... or so it seemed

At the end of lap 35, Kimi Raikkonen came into the pits from third for his second stop as per the original two-stop plan. In a frantic few seconds the left rear tyre wasn't changed as quickly as the other three and the Ferrari was released into the pit lane with three super-softs and one remaining soft tyre. In the chaotic process, Raikkonen's unchanged left rear hit the leg of Fancesco Cigarini, breaking the Ferrari mechanic's tibia and fibula in a harrowing moment caught by F1's world feed.

Raikkonen's race was over and quite understandably the Ferrari pit crew's attention was diverted to their colleague as he received first aid treatment on the dusty pit lane apron. It was around this time that Ferrari committed to Vettel's one-stop and informed the race leader that Plan C was coming into effect.

"They have different plans and when they told me the plan I first had to think what it was again because it wasn't the first or second option," Vettel explained. "I had to think a little bit but then I got it and I looked up on the tower [showing driver positions] and I saw [Pierre] Gasly was in P4 so I thought the gap would be quite big and we have nothing to lose to go for the one stop and try to make the tyres last. But it wasn't our intended strategy at first.

"With 15 laps to go I was still very comfortable and then there was a big step around ten laps to go where, the tyre just dropped off and the last five laps were really difficult."

Keen not to give the game away, Vettel insisted all was fine even though he was still convinced Mercedes and Bottas had him at checkmate.

"With ten laps to go I think I went on the radio and said I have everything under control -- I had nothing under control! I was hoping that they would tell Valtteri that Sebastian's controlling the pace and tell him to turn the engine down so that I can relax a bit, but obviously that wasn't the case, he wasn't told.

"I'm sure if I was on the radio saying that my tyres were done, then they would have told him 'come on now, keep pushing.' I think he was pushing, nevertheless, but yeah, overall obviously a great way to win."

How did Mercedes' chance slip away?

As Ferrari emerged victorious, Mercedes was left analysing a second strategic defeat in as many races. It too had been convinced Bottas would win the race once the Finn had switched to a one-stop but perhaps its overconfidence was part of the problem.

"We thought we had won the race already after coming out on the medium behind Sebastian with a gap we were able to close down knowing they would need to stop once again or they would run out of tyre if we were to push them," Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said after the race. "This was the moment where I would say 90% probability was on us winning and we lost that."

Explaining the thinking behind the strategy, he added: "We realised pretty early that the medium was a good tyre so we decided to go for the medium and see how it would be on our car, but stick with the option of stopping twice. Valtteri immediately had very good pace. It was clear we could make it to the end on the medium, but there was still a chance Ferrari would do the same.

"This is taking big risks because at the end, Vettel's car was probably two seconds slower than Valtteri's so if it had been one or two laps later, he would have lost the race. But 'would be' is not what counts. What counts is the race result. Sebastian and Ferrari won it, very deserved. We adapted to the situation."

In the cockpit, Bottas admits he was not pushing as hard as perhaps he should have been until it was too late.

"I think it was maybe 15 or 20 laps before the end that I got the information that said he would definitely try a one stop as well and would most likely struggle at the end," he said. "But before that we were actually 80 percent sure he would do a two-stop and I even asked the team at the beginning of the stint if they wanted me to try to catch him up or if they wanted me to make the quickest way to the flag by managing the tyres.

"The information I got said he would most likely two-stop so I kind of had no rush at the beginning of the stint. But if we had pushed harder at some points it's difficult to say if it would have helped or if I would have struggled more in the end."

But by not pushing Mercedes opened up the opportunity for Vettel to one stop. If Bottas had closed in quicker, Ferrari would have been forced to pit Vettel for a second time or lose first place on the track. Sure, the Ferrari would have then attacked on super-soft tyres at the end, but he still would have had to pass both Mercedes drivers on track. In the end Mercedes not only opened up the opportunity of a one-stop, it left itself too short of time to counter it. Given the pace of the Mercedes on the medium tyre, both were avoidable.

Although it would have required a monumental drive for him to challenge the front two, Hamilton was also suffering from a lack of direction from the pit wall midway through the race. In third place he could have been a vital part of the Mercedes strategy by holding Vettel up should the Ferrari make a second pit stop and emerge behind him.

"With the communication it was just hard to know how much to lean on the tyres in those early phases [of the second stint]," he said. "At one point I understood that the other guys were doing two stops and there was no way they would get to the end on the one stop, so then I've got to save the tyres so that when I'm at the end and he catches me I can still fight. Or I've got to catch him while the tyres are still good and close the gap to him to the best of my abilities because they were on a one-stop. I didn't have that information so I was driving around in no-man's land for a while and the radio wasn't working properly."

The pit wall could speak to Hamilton but they couldn't hear his feedback, creating a frustrating situation in the cockpit. Hamilton was given a target time in the low 1:34s but he didn't even know if that was to hold on to third place or to get himself in the running for the race victory.

"I was on newer tyres, so if at that point I had pushed to the maximum I could have done probably a 1:33.7 -- but I wouldn't have made it to the end of the race on a 1:33.7 or 1:33.6. I was doing a 1:34.3 or and I was hovering around a 1:34.2 to 1:34.4 and they were just saying do a low 1:34.

"So I was like, is this low enough? If I was doing this 1:34.3, does that mean I catch them on the last lap? Does it mean I catch them with five laps to go? Does it mean I'm fighting for the win? I didn't have that information. That precision is very important because I can drive a little bit closer to the pace or off the pace, I can save a little bit more fuel to then attack later. It's very much like a chess match."

The result in Bahrain was all the more painful after a similar situation two weeks ago in Australia saw Hamilton miss out on the race win due to a software error. He too had the pace to win that race if he pushed at the right time under the right direction and the lost points haven't gone unnoticed.

"It is very marginal now and it really highlights or magnifies the importance of communication and these small little things that could make a difference of extra points," he said on Sunday night in Bahrain. "If you look at the last race [in Australia], we should have won that race and through struggling to understand how we operate and communicate we did lose the race. I think if we look back there were things we could have done to make sure we came out ahead.

"I'm not sure how it was for Valtteri today but I think it wasn't ideal for him either. These races we ought not to be losing to Ferrari. We need to get ourselves to the point where we are not only strong in our operations in the car but also when we are in the race."

"What I always refer back to because I find it the easiest way to explain it is that when you have your stints you have that certain amount of money to spend. Look at Melbourne, I had money left over at my pit stop. I shouldn't have much money left. If I had £100 to spend in the first stint, I still had £20 left at the end and I should have had 30p. It's that kind of explanation.

"The only way you can get to use those last percentages is if communication is on point, so then you know where to be spending it. Because what you do if you don't have the information and you do overspend is that you won't hit your target lap [for your pit stop] and you lose time if they say you have to go to the target lap and your tyres fall off four laps before. You lose all the time that you gained or you just don't make it to your stop.

"But look at this race, people didn't think they could do one stop, but they did. They definitely didn't expect Ferrari to do a one stop on the super-soft and the soft, we didn't know that the tyre could do that. It's just knowledge as well that we are gaining over these races that we will learn from."

The evidence of Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix suggests Mercedes still has the faster car over a race distance, but only in clean air. Throw in pit stops, backmarker traffic and Virtual Safety Cars and Ferrari is close enough to force the issue and play to its car's tyre management strengths. That's exactly what the Italian team did on Sunday night and a second victory of the season was its well-deserved reward.