Vettel and Bottas were involved in an ugly collision right at the start of the race, where in Vettel locked up a bit on Turn 1, making contact with Bottas, thereby puncturing his tyre, and damaging his own front wing.
Both drivers needed to come into the pit lane to get their car back in shape and meanwhile the stewards were looking into that collision for penalties to be dished out.
Finally they decided to hand Vettel a 5 second penalty as he was the main reason for that lap 1 collision.
Check out the video:
Oh no.. #vettel #f1 #ferrari #sebastianvettel #formula1 pic.twitter.com/iJjjxfRcYy
— Team Sebastian Vettel #5 (@Seb_VettelFan) June 24, 2018
Safety car came on after the collision and both Vettel and Bottas decided to pit under that and came out with the soft tyre, so as to go through till the end of the Grand Prix.
The duo have been on the charge ever since and at the time of writing this article, Vettel is P5 and Bottas is P9.
Gasly and Ocon have had to retire because of a collision between the two. The incident will be investigated after the race.
Hamilton is comfortably leading the race having not been involved in the initial rut between the cars behind him.
First lap and damage for Sebastian Vettel 😖#FrenchGP 🇫🇷 #Seb5 pic.twitter.com/R5U9Pf2F07
— Sebastian Vettel #5 (@sebvettelnews) June 24, 2018
Everybody pitting and then Vettel stays out and then suddenly it rains and everbody has to do an extra pit stop. God pls make it happen
— tami. (@Vetteleclerc) June 24, 2018
Ridiculous, just ridiculous time penalty to Vettel
— Tancredi Palmeri (@tancredipalmeri) June 24, 2018