“Maybe I have a target on the car,” jokes Sebastian Vettel, a little tormented after the Formula 1 race in Spielberg. As in the sprint on Saturday, the Aston Martin driver was thrown into the gravel bed by another driver, from which he then had to reverse to free himself. This time Vettel clashed with Pierre Gasly at Turn 4.
Vettel and Gasly had been fighting for twelfth place on lap 40 when Vettel tried to pass the AlphaTauri on the outside. “I don’t think there’s much to say there. I think it was a good maneuver on the outside,” says Vettel. “I was already over, and then he was too late and drove into me.”
Vettel had already had the view in the car: “He has to give up the curve, I was ahead,” he said on the radio. With the postscript, “What’s wrong with these people?”
In retrospect, the German describes Gasly’s maneuver as “a bit overambitious”. “I was ahead and I don’t know where he was going. He obviously wanted to stay ahead with his nose, but he wasn’t.”
Gasly: ”I guess it means it’s my fault”
For the collision, Gasly was given a five-second penalty and two penalty points by the commissioners. “I tried to fight hard,” explains the Frenchman. “You know when you fight side-by-side there that there’s always a risk. We’ve seen that in the past. It wasn’t on purpose, but bad luck for Sebastian.”
The AlphaTauri pilot can’t say much about the question of guilt: “I haven’t looked at the recordings yet, so I can’t say anything against the penalty. But if I got it, then that means I’m to blame.”
Gasly ended up 15th, Vettel only 17th and last. “The car wasn’t in the best condition after that,” says the German, who had been struggling with problems throughout the race. “Part of another car landed on my front wing on the first lap,” he says. “I don’t know if the car was damaged by it. After that we were pretty slow.”
I have no idea about the penalty
The icing on the cake was a five-second penalty including a penalty point that Vettel received in the very last lap for multiple track limit violations – this made him fall behind Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri.
However, Vettel only found out about this during the interviews after the race. “I didn’t know that at all,” he says in surprise when asked about it. “I had three [Verstöße] and didn’t get a warning so I don’t know how I can get a penalty if I don’t get a warning.”
“I had three violations, as I was told on the last lap, and then it goes up to five. That’s a bit strange,” said Vettel. However, he is wrong here: the commissioners issued a warning after the third offense, and there was a penalty for the fourth offense in Spielberg.
Brake dust becomes a problem
After the race, however, there was another issue for Vettel, as the four-time world champion showed up for interviews with some black dust on his face. It was brake dust.
“To be honest that’s something they need to work on because the front brake duct design is blowing all the brake dust in our faces this year and that’s not a good thing,” he says. “Inhaling carbon dust isn’t exactly healthy. I hope the FIA looks at it very soon because it’s pointless and easy to change.”