Although Sebastian Vettel’s title challenge crumbled in the latter half of the season, the Ferrari driver acknowledges that his road rage incident in Baku was the biggest mistake he made during the course of the season.
Ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend Vettel told reporters, “I think there are always things that you could do a bit different. Overall, I think we can all agree that we didn’t have the season, up to this point, that we could’ve had or should’ve had for various reasons.”
Asked to pin-point where he would have done things differently, he replied, “I think looking back Baku stands out obviously, but for the rest I think it’s been okay.”
Vettel was referring to the incident during the tense and incident packed Azerbaijan Grand Prix, when behind a safety car, he swerved deliberately into race leader Lewis Hamilton accusing the Mercedes driver of brake testing him.
Vettel was penalised by FIA stewards with a ten seconds stop-and-go-penalty the incident, while they cleared Hamilton of any wrongdoing.
It was only several races later when Vettel’s campaign was seriously derailed during the Asian leg of the championship, which allowed Hamilton to wrap up the title with two races to go after trialing Vettel in the championship throughout the first half of the season.
“I’m part of the team so I think we all live through the season together, and the same is for the next two races. The morale is good, the guys have had a very tough time in the last couple of weekends with a lot of big changes, set-up changes and long nights etc…” added Vettel.
With two races to go, but the championship decided, Vettel said, “Obviously, time passes and that helps. Mexico was a big disappointment, but here it’s a different race and a new challenge that we are looking forward to.”
“For these last two Grands Prix, we want to do everything really well as a team and enjoy the weekends. We don’t stop developing our car and this year we have improved it in order to give us advantages also for the future.”
“Development is an ongoing process and since the regulations don’t change that much, there are many things we can learn from this season and carry over into next year,” added Vettel.
Big Question: What was Sebastian’s biggest gaffe in 2017?