Sebastian Vettel has played down his apparent mutiny over Ferrari's race strategy midway through the German GP as the Scuderia fell behind Red Bull in the standings.

A week after the team announced the departure of technical director James Allison, Ferrari suffered another blow at Hockenheim as they slipped to just third in the Constructors' Championship while Vettel was overheard disobeying an instruction to pit for new tyres while driving to a fifth-place finish.

"Negative, negative," the German replied over team radio as he successfully overruled the team's instruction. "These tyres feel good."

But Vettel insisted the remarks weren't as mutinous as they may have sounded.

"It's normal that in the race l will talk quite a lot about strategy and tyres," Vettel said. "I don't know how much was broadcast but it was a long conversation."

In any case, the incident couldn't overshadow the statistical evidence of Ferrari falling further behind Mercedes. At the halfway stage of the season, the Scuderia remain without a win and are already over 170 points in the standings. Crisis, what's the Italian for 'crisis'?

"I'm not sure there will be a summer break," said under-pressure team boss Maurizio Arrivabene. "We have to work hard. The situation of the team is the same that we had in Hungary and Silverstone. We need to learn and must fight again."

Don't miss the F1 Report: German GP review and half-term report on Wednesday at 8.30pm on Sky F1 with Natalie Pinkham, Marc Priestley and Mike Gascoyne