Scuderia Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel feels that the way Mercedes aggressively backed up the grid during the formation lap at Sochi Autodrom was ‘ridiculous’.

On the approach to the grid on the formation lap, it appeared as though Lewis Hamilton was dropping back from the pole-sitter Nico Rosberg, and Vettel was unhappy with the tactic.

“I just thought he was going unreasonably slowly,” Vettel told reporters at the Circuit of the Americas, the venue for this weekend’s United States Grand Prix. “There was no reason to go that slow. If you want to pack up the field you can do it earlier and not in the very last bit.

“So I tried to tell them, ‘look, go’, because it’s just ridiculous. You also need to be aware that if you stop that suddenly and aggressively, then five cars back it has a much different effect than when you are the car just behind. Also the restart was quite smelly and not the way to do it. There is a rule.

“For the formation lap I tried to show him there was no reason to go that slow. It was both of them that were going very slow, and at the restart it was something similar. So maybe they need to look into it again.”