Ferrari denies messing up Austrian GP tyre strategy

The Maranello-based outfit had looked poised for a good challenge on victory at the Red Bull Ring, but it all went wrong in the race.

Vettel crashed out of the lead when his right rear tyre exploded as he tried to eke out a long-opening stint on supersofts, while Raikkonen was left facing a fightback and ultimately beaten by Red Bull's Verstappen despite holding early track position.

Arrivabene insisted that Ferrari was not at fault on either occasion, as Vettel's failure was unexpected and Raikkonen's strategy should have allowed him to finish second.

"He [Vettel] was supposed to be out for a certain number of laps and we were asking to him and he was supposed to give feedback on tyres," explained Arrivabene.

"We had no signs on telemetry, no sign from Seb, and no sign from the sensor of the tyre that suddenly the tyre was collapsing. Zero sign. The performance was okay.

"Then like with Sebastian, the feedback that Kimi gave us was good. So we were continuing, like happened with [Daniel] Ricciardo, the guys were going in and if not we were able to overtake.

"In fact, on the last lap in Turn 3, where he [earlier] overtook Ricciardo, he was ready to go [and get past Verstappen] but we had the yellow flag. They were very lucky – it is ironic."

Arrivabene explained that although Verstappen was slashing into the track advantage that Raikkonen had early on, its software always predicted that the Finn would recover shortly before the chequered flag after his stop.

"We were thinking that Red Bull was stopping again. The data we had was quite precise, so we took a risk.

"In our data Kimi was able to overtake Verstappen two laps before the race end, and we were nearly there.

"Concerning that, without this tyre failure [for Sebastian] he was very high on the podium. I don't know where, but very high as the two strategies were different to one another."

Arrivabene said that the team had not had by Sunday night any explanation from Pirelli about why the right rear tyre on Vettel's car had failed.

"It is too early to understand what happened," he said. "It could be kerbs or any other reason. We are talking to Pirelli to understand the reason why. Other teams were running without any problem and this is really strange."