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Vettel discloses what caused the Bottas crash

Utkarsh Bhatla
Published

Sebastian Vettel has caused a lot of uproar in the F1 fraternity after his Bottas crash during lap 1.

Apparently a ‘racing incident’, Vettel ended up ramming into the back of Bottas, causing Bottas’ tyre to be punctured and his own front wing to be damaged.

As a result of the collision, Vettel was given a 5 second penalty.

Apart from the incident though, Vettel drove like a champion, finishing the race in 5th position after he was forced down to the tail of the race due to the collision.

After the race Vettel spoke about the incident and how despite having a dream start, he found himself in an awkward place with nowhere to go and thus had to brake early, something that resulted in that lock up.

“My start was too good,” Vettel said

“Then I ended up with nowhere to go.

“It was my mistake, I tried to brake early and get out of it, but I had no room and no grip, being so close to the car in front and also next to me.

“Valtteri tried to get his position back [on the outside], which is fair enough, but then I had nowhere to go – the turn goes left.

“I tried to slow down but with that little grip, I could only open the radius [of the steering] and that meant I had to unfortunately make contact to Valtteri.” he added.

Vettel was quizzed about Ferrari’s pace and how it was almost right up there with Mercedes’ pace.

“I haven’t seen enough of the race, you have seen more than me.

“We had good pace, I tried to hammer through the field to recover and damaged the tyres, therefore it is a bit difficult to say.

“You are always on different tyres and in the end I had a lot fresher tyres [than the rest].

“I think we had decent pace to at least go with Mercedes.” Vettel concluded.

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