Vettel: Sometimes you find yourself over-driving

Sebastian Vettel had a very short Malaysian Grand Prix and he was punished by FIA stewards his role in the Turn 1, lap one, incident on the day while being slammed by Italian media all week - but the German is adamant he is driving within his abilities.

Asked by media at Suzuka if he was overdriving to compensate for poor qualifying and a below par car, the Ferrari driver said, “No not at all, I went to the inside and was able to go side-by-side with Max."

"I was probably a little bit too late in comparison to the first two cars but I make the corner, it’s not a problem. I’m not shooting straight like crazy so of course it is a risk and in that case it didn’t get rewarded."

"It was quite bad for Nico because he had nothing to do with it. I phoned him up straight after and explained to him my point of view, but sometimes these things happen."

As for over-driving the car, Vettel said, "I see where you might come from, like I said before what happened last week, I don’t think there is so much to analyse or so much to go through and other than that you try to squeeze everything you can from the car at any given time."

"Sometimes you find yourself over-driving, I mean it’s not particular this year, last year or the year before, or whatever, I think you obviously try to achieve the best, sometimes you push too hard. It’s normal, it’s human, and sometimes you don’t push enough, so it’s about finding the sweet spot in the middle."

“I think usually we get there pretty well, we make quite big steps from Friday to Saturday with the setup, which of course is not a driving effort, it’s an engineering effort to get together with the team."

"In general we try to nail every part of the weekend, but, as I said, for sure we didn’t have the success, which for most people is the measure of if you nail everything or not.

"In that regard we haven’t been so successful but I think still, as a team, we have very good races, it’s been a very good team effort and I would say the spirit within the team is very high," added Vettel who has not won a race so far this season.