Sebastian Vettel finished in fourth place in the Japanese Grand Prix, just off the podium. Kimi Raikkonen also had to fight his way up from the fourth row of the grid to fifth at the flag, having taken a five grid place penalty, following a gearbox change.
Sebastian Vettel
“We had a very good start and made good progress in the first two laps, passing [Daniel] Ricciardo and [Sergio] Perez, then we were faster than [Max] Verstappen. I think we had the second fastest car. So it was a question of time, but obviously Max came in as soon as he could to maintain track position, which worked well for him.
We tried to go on the softer tire in the end. Initially we thought would work well, but then we had too much degradation and we were falling off this group. It is always easy to criticize, and I am sure there are many “experts” that knew better, but on the pitwall as well as in the car, I was keen to go for this strategy so to extend the second stint.
It’s a fact I lost big chunks of time with the blue flags. I always got the lapped cars right in sector one, when they can’t move, so I was losing a lot of time. There’s probably where I lost track position to Lewis [Hdmilton], who always seemed to clear the lapped cars in the straight. But then the pace wouldn’t have probably been enough to challenge for the podium.”
Kimi Raikkonen
“After a good qualifying, the issue with the gearbox and the consequent starting position change was not ideal in this kind of track. Obviously there’s a lot of disappointment, as we had a good car. If we could have stayed in front, we would have fought with more free air and with a lot of speed.
I had a good start but then I got stuck behind other people. It was really tricky to follow other cars and it affected quite a bit the behaviour. It was also difficult to stay close to them and attack them. Once we got past them and I was on my own, the car was quick and handling well. For sure today we were fast enough for a better result. Unfortunately that’s how it goes…”
