Niki Lauda made no excuses as he said that Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel simply did a better job than Mercedes in winning the Malaysian Grand Prix. The former World Champion was quick to congratulate Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene immediately after the race. “Very simple, they were unbeatable today, I would say,” he said. “Because they did a perfect strategy, and Vettel did an incredible job. The car performed, the tires lasted. For us it was a three-stop strategy. Why? Because with the tires at their peak, for us it was important to make three stops. Ferrari was less hard on tires altogether, therefore they had to do a two-stop, and one race. “I went to Arrivabene right away and congratulated him, from my heart, because he is competition, and more competition is better, and if Ferrari wins, Bernie (Ecclestone) can't complain about boring Vettel, which he said. Vettel is not boring any more! I think it's very good, this result, for the total image if F1, which we're always complaining about – I'm not, but some other people.” Lauda said that the Ferrari win would be a wake-up call for Mercedes. “Normally in sport when these things happen, and you don't win every race, the bell rings. The bell will ring loud because we all will hear it and we'll react to it, which is normal. But nevertheless we're second and third, we won the last race, so the world is not finished yet after one Vettel victory. But nevertheless they were better today.”

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io