No, it's not the exact same. Seb didn't receive any different treatment. It's just all in your head.
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Amazing to see Daniel have that puncture, pit and still finish 4th. Bottas showed how Williams are slipping back. 45 seconds behind. I mean if the Mercedes had finished, that would have been +1 minute with a clear run and maybe even a lap down.
Because you make it all sound as though it was all premeditated, which it wasn't. Every team messes up strategy from time to time. Look at Monaco last year with Lewis, which is probably the biggest strategy scew up we've seen for a long time. Shit happens and that's the difference. It wasn't a treatment by team it was a mistake.
The strategy wasn't messed up as such. All teams were saying that the three-stopper would be the quicker strategy unless you got bogged down by traffic. Hembery said during the grid walk that the three-stopper would be 6 seconds quicker and that most likely only Merc would do only two stops once they were far enough out front.
The problem was that at race start the track temperature was down by 5 degrees centigrade in comparison to Saturday at the same time, which meant the medium compound could run significantly longer than the teams had anticipated. In theory RB and Ferrari did the right thing: split the strategy and cover each other.
The big 'mistake' of RB here was that every other team would have covered Vettel with Verstappen, because RIC was leading at the time, and giving away track position needlessly is a cardinal sin in terms of strategy. I'm still not convinced that it was a mere mistake. What easier way would there be to silence all the criticism of the Kvyat/Verstappen swap by having Max win on his debut, not to mention that it was PR gold.
After the race , commenting about the poor strategy decision , Horner said one thing that had me more believing that it was just a mistake , which was "You're always smarter afterwards ." .
Sure , it was easier with the other guy on the top step , but it still sounded like a "hands up" sorry .
Does anyone believe what Horner says anymore? I'm pretty sure they knew they were giving the better strategy to Verstappen and they did it for the headlines. Had Ricciardo passed Vettel and Raikkonen, which was very unlikely to begin with, what would have happened then?
Both teams gave their number 1 driver what they thought was the number 1 strategy. Unless there was a consipracy between Red Bull and Ferrari to favour both Verstappen and Raikkonen, then it looks like the 2-stopper was a hedge bet that happened to pay off this time.