Sebastian Vettel rues the early mistake which cost him more points in F1 Monaco GP as he scored a point eventually after a penalty to rival.
For Vettel, a point was the end result for him and Aston Martin in Monaco. A winner in the past at Monte Carlo during his halcyon period at Red Bull and despite the 10th place finish, thanks to Esteban Ocon’s penalty, it perhaps could have been better.
He qualified in the Top 10 but dropped back at the start in crazy conditions. He stayed with the Top 10 pack until the end and benefited by Ocon’s penalty. It was not the result he wanted but felt that they at least got something out of it.
“Basically, we don’t go back empty handed, so I guess it was a decent recovery,” said Vettel. “We had some issues at the beginning of the race, I had an excursion on the first corner, really struggling on the extreme wets and after that we tried to do what we can and happy to score a point in the end, but I was hoping that we can maybe extract a bit more.”
And there possibly was the problem, an issue at St. Devote left Vettel having to make progress and as it was he scored a point albeit thanks to Ocon. “It was a race in which anything could happen, but actually it was quite a clean and straightforward race for me,” he said.
“We managed to pick up a point, which was a good effort because it is always difficult to make progress at Monaco, especially with only one dry line. We learned more about the car, too, optimising the set-up with the new parts we introduced recently. All these steps are taking us in a good direction for the races to come,” summed up Vettel.
His teammate Lance Stroll was not so lucky finishing 14th but made some ground after a lowly start. For Vettel and Aston Martin, it has been a challenging season as they haven’t really lived up to the expectation of them by the Grand Prix fraternity.