F1: Vettel Rides His Luck To Jump To Second

Formula 1

F1: Vettel Rides His Luck To Jump To Second

Red Bull driver goes from sixth to second in Melbourne...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted March 18, 2012 Melbourne (AUS)

Sebastian Vettel managed to turn around what could have been a disastrous weekend for his hopes of a third title in Australia when he avoided the first corner mess and turned sixth on the grid into second place by the flag.

Vettel made it to third on merit and then benefited by being able to pit under the safety car just after the McLarens up ahead had pitted under green. He was able to jump Lewis Hamilton and slot in between them in the queue before the restart.

“The start was surely pretty interesting, so I enjoyed that,” said Vettel. “I think I had a good start first off, getting off the line was important. Then it’s a bit tricky here because Turn One is quite difficult to find the right point to hit the brakes. But I was quite surprised when Nico all of a sudden arrived from the outside. I think I got a bit stuck.

“Surely you don’t want to leave the door open at the inside, he used the opportunity and, yeah, great start for him. Nevertheless I think I was happy with how the first two corners went and from there I felt pretty quickly that yeah, McLarens are pulling away, bye-bye, and I had to make sure that we are not losing too much ground.

“I felt that we were quicker than the Mercedes. I got past Nico fairly early, which was important, and then with Michael I did a mistake going into the first corner. I was a bit surprised, obviously I was in the DRS and I arrived a fair bit quicker than the lap before which caught me out. Fortunately I kept the position against Nico, and then had another go at Michael and, yeah, he was very kind, he did exactly the same mistake I did a couple of laps earlier, so that was good.

“Then it was quite surprising to see how we were able to catch Lewis in a way. I think the second stints were fairly, yeah we had the same pace: Lewis was a bit quicker in the beginning; I seemed to be a bit quicker at the end just when we lined up for the last round of stops and I decided to stay out when he pitted which I think was the right decision.”

Vettel felt he could have got past Hamilton even without the safety car situation.

“I think we would have had a little bit of a go anyway, but then the safety car came out. I’m not sure, I think it might have helped us a little bit, anyway we got him at the stop, so great job from the guys at the pitbox, and after that, yeah, obviously I thought I’d have another go at Jenson but yeah, the first two or three corners after the restart he was already quite far away. I was struggling, at that time I was holding Lewis up a little bit and he [Jenson] was pulling away too much. I think once I got settled the lap times weren’t too bad, the speed wasn’t too bad but I think overall he was too quick today for the whole race.

Vettel admitted that overall it had been a good day: “I think it was a very positive race for us, we knew it would be a difficult one, so to come away with second and a lot of points is very important and I think the car has a lot of potential.

“Obviously we would have loved to have been in a better position yesterday but as I said, we did a lot of laps and I think we understood more about the car, and now we need to address the problems and make sure that we give them a harder time next week.”

He insisted that he wasn’t too down after qualifying.

“We didn’t have the best day yesterday, maybe that’s true, but nevertheless, I think I was quite confident going into the race. I felt I can do better, my eyes were on the front, not looking into the mirrors too much. I think the racing has already been like this last year when you had pit stops and to make the strategy work you had to pass a couple of guys quickly. It was a little bit the same today,
obviously, all the time for position, at the beginning of the race, right after the lights went out, so in that regard, it was a bit different maybe to the majority of last year, but it’s not as if it’s a completely new situation.

“Most importantly last year, we didn’t allow ourselves to get used to it and therefore it was nothing out of the ordinary, today, to start from P6 and we know that, as I said, there’s a long race ahead of us and opportunities to fight. My target was to win the race and now I came second, I think the winner totally deserves to win that race, and therefore it was our maximum, and I’m very happy with that.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.