But neither was he going to be all dancing and finger twirling on the podium. “I ran up to the Mercedes office because I wanted to tell Valtteri what a great job he had done,” he admitted.
“In the circumstances, I wanted to try and give him a little lift.” That simple act of empathy brought tears to the Finn. I made a lot of mistakes today, which I don’t normally do.
I had to let him and Kimi go in the first and not to plan, but I was happier in the second stint.
Lewis was pushing hard to keep the pressure on but he never got close enough to do something. But it was only in the last five laps that I could enjoy it a bit more.
Today we were bitten.” The Haas cars, dubbed the ‘grey Ferraris’ by rivals jealous of the American outfit’s close alliance with the Italian team and a perceived resemblance to Maranello’s 2017 cars, proved very quick in testing and in qualifying.
Valtteri Bottas’ crash and Daniel Ricciardo’s grid penalty left Kevin Magnussen fifth and Romain Grosjean sixth on the grid.
We’ll focus on that one and get our pit stops sorted out.” It was an expensive afternoon.
Besides the significant (though secret) amount of prize money they lost, they were also fined 5000 euros per car for releasing them in unsafe condition.Not bad when, in the final analysis, they only had the third fastest car behind Mercedes and Red Bull. The adrenaline was running and we got the Virtual Safety Car, so I came into the pits and luckily I got out ahead.“I was hoping for better start but it didn’t work, so I had to settle for third and towards the end of the first stint I lost the connection to Lewis and Kimi,” Vettel said. Then I saw the car stopped in T4 (Kevin Magnussen’s Haas). “In the first stint Lewis faster, and he was fast in the second stint too.And secondly, he refrained from talking about wiping smiles off faces, which he might well have been tempted into after his exchange with Lewis Hamilton after qualifying.If they had been able to put wheels on their cars properly, there would never have been a Virtual Safety Car and then a real Safety Car intervention to retrieve Romain Grosjean’s stricken car from the exit of Turn 2, and Hamilton, who was leading up to that point, would have won going away. Vettel’s win was backed by to Kimi Raikkonen’s third place, giving them 40 points to Mercedes’ 22.“I did everything I believed I was supposed to for the win.