Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene believes Sebastian Vettel would have won the Australian Grand Prix had it not been for the red flag caused by Fernando Alonso's accident on lap 18 and has defended the decision not to attempt the same strategy as race winner Nico Rosberg at the restart.
Vettel was leading the race when Alonso collided with Esteban Gutierrez and wrecked his car in the run off at Turn 3. The resulting clean-up job resulted in the race being stopped, which in turn gave Mercedes the opportunity to bolt on medium tyres at the restart and run until the end of the race. Ferrari opted to keep Vettel on super-softs at the restart and make a later switch to softs, but it resulted in him losing track position to Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.
Asked if he was confident of victory ahead of the red flag, Arrivabene said: "I mean, on the pit wall we were confident in all honesty. We were looking at the race and looking at the gap we were gaining and at that time our radio was to go with our strategy and keep going.
"I don't want to make any excuses, it's part of the race and you have to accept it and that's it."
Asked if Ferrari made the wrong choice on tyres under the red flag, Arrivabene defended the choice to go aggressive.
"The choice of tyres, I mean, at that stage of the race you have to be more aggressive," he added. "It could be right, it could be wrong, I think Sebastian was talking about that. At the end we were pushing like hell and Sebastian had a chance to be able to overtake Hamilton, it was in our strategy.
"If you want to look at the glass not half empty, we were better and this is the news. Of course you can't be happy after this, but this is racing."
Arrivabene also defended Ferrari's decision not to fit mediums ahead of the restart.
"No, I can't say. We need to look at the data in the garage because every car has different consumption and degradation. To be certain if we were right or to be certain if we were wrong makes no sense now. We need to look at the data from the car."