Ferrari admits to "wrong decision" on Montreal tyre strategy

Vettel pitted under the Virtual Safety Car to retrieve Jenson Button’s McLaren, which consigned him to a two-stop strategy to race winner Lewis Hamilton’s one-stop.

“We overestimated the degradation of the tyres,” said Arrivabene. “That’s the reason why we called him in and it was the wrong decision.

“We don’t have to make the story bigger than it is. Today we made a mistake.”

Vettel pleased with performance

Although Vettel lost the race on strategy, he was buoyed by his Ferrari showing Mercedes-matching pace around the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

“Lewis was a bit too quick, that was the issue,” he said. “I think we had a great weekend. Fantastic start and then lap one was a bit hairy and I struggled to stop the car for the last corner [which he straightlined].

“I was pushing all race. We committed fairly early to a different strategy, which we were planning to come back [to the lead]. Obviously then Lewis was able to stay out and see what the tyres are doing, and probably the tyres lasted a bit better than what we expected.

“That made it quite tricky on fresher tyres to close the gap, but overall it was a great weekend for us.

“We struggled a little bit the last couple of races, and now we see the car has performance and we unleashed it – it was a really fun race.

"I am not a big fan of blaming anyone and anything. The degradation wasn't as high as we expected."