VETTEL APOLOGISES FOR VERSTAPPEN ACCIDENT
Ferrari man humble after spectacular Silverstone crash ruins his race weekend
“Max could have been second”
Christian Horner
Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel has apologised to rival Max Verstappen after the Ferrari driver made contact with his Red Bull rival at the British Grand Prix and robbed the Dutchman of a potential podium finish.
The pair were battling on lap 38 of the race when Verstappen got a run around the outside of Vettel going into Stowe corner. Verstappen made the move stick, but the Ferrari driver looked to immediately claim the place back.
He looked down the inside of the Red Bull going into Vale but aborted the move. He pulled back to the right-hand side of the car in front, but was unable to avoid colliding with the rear of the Honda-powered machine.
Vettel, who is now 13 points behind Verstappen in the battle for third place in the drivers’ championship, said:
“It was my fault: I made a mistake.”
Podium pain
The contact meant that Verstappen was relegated to a fifth-placed finish behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Pierre Gasly’s Red Bull.
Vettel approached Verstappen in parc ferme after the race and shook his hand, apologising for the incident.
Vettel had been forced to pit to change the damaged nose section of his SF90 and he picked up a 10-second penalty for causing a collision. He was also handed two points on his race licence. He finished in penultimate position, 16th.
Verstappen was placid after the incident. “I guess he misjudged his braking in there – but I already spoke to him, he apologised to me immediately out of the car, and that’s it,” the six-time grand prix winner said.
“It’s disappointing but you can’t change it now.”
The collision spun Verstappen’s Red Bull, which had been running in fifth spot, around. That led to the RB15 being launched airborne off the sausage kerb on the inside of the corner.
Verstappen, who ended up finishing nine seconds off the podium, said it was “a bit of a surprise” that he hadn’t retired on the spot.
“The power steering more or less failed so it was quite a hard workout for me out there, the seat popped up so it was moving around a lot,” he explained.
“The diffuser was broken, the floor was broken, underneath I could see parts falling off. [It] was not great. The car was not what it should’ve been, [so I’m] still happy to be fifth.”
Vettel’s closing gap
Vettel, whose last world title was in 2013, said he was fully responsible for the accident and he had changed his mind about the cause of the incident during the race itself.
Vettel, who had qualified in sixth spot on the grid at Silverstone, said: “In the end it’s my mistake. Obviously he was a bit faster and closing quite quickly and passed very easily before Turn 15. But then [Verstappen] ran a bit wide, so I thought I could sneak back.
“But as I said, I thought there was a gap that then turned out to not be there. It’s a misjudgement from my side.”
Vettel vented his frustration on the pits-to-car radio, but said that he had reappraised the situation after a few more laps of the circuit once he had returned to action.
“Of course initially I thought that there was a gap and the gap closed, but after some laps I realised that it was my mistake,” he added.
“So I went to Max and told him what I thought. That to me counts more than anything or any stewards decision, to be honest.”
Horner’s anger
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said that the crash robbed Verstappen of a chance to finish on the podium, and indeed he could have even risen to second position given a late tyre stop for second-placed Valtteri Bottas, who was forced into a halt to swap compound.
Horner said: “That was very frustrating and obviously it was remarkable the car held together.
“To keep going with the damage he had, that was quite incredible and at least he managed to finish the race and get some points out of it.
“It is frustrating because he had obviously made a great pass on Seb and I can only imagine that it was a complete misjudgement by Seb to lock up and hit him the way he did.”
Horner said his driver lost a nailed-on podium, two weeks after his first win of the season, regardless of which place he would have ended up.
“Obviously from our perspective it was very frustrating because it knocked Max off a guaranteed podium,” said Horner. “Which spot on the podium, we don’t know what it would be. He would certainly have been second on track, and then whether Valtteri could catch him or not we would have to wait and see.”