Sebastian Vettel wasn’t entirely satisfied with third place at the Austrian Grand Prix, even if it was enough to see him reclaim the championship lead.
Following a three-place grid penalty given after qualifying for impeding Carlos Sainz, it appeared as though the Ferrari driver would be simply limiting the damage done to his main title rival Lewis Hamilton particularly after the Briton took the lead and Vettel dropped to eighth on Lap 1.
However, Mercedes’ decision not to pit the race leader under the Virtual Safety Car, caused by the retirement of Valtteri Bottas, put the 33-year-old back in the pack just ahead of Vettel, allowing him to pounce up the inside at Turn 3 and move ahead.
Eventually, a fuel pressure problem would see a run of 33 consecutive points finishes end for Hamilton and see Vettel move ahead by a single point, but that wasn’t his main focus speaking afterwards.
“No, I think it’s boring if I take that!” he told Sky Sports F1 as to whether third was a good result. “I don’t want to sound arrogant but you never know what the race is offering.
“It would have been nice to start further up. I tried to get some back at the start at Turn 1 but it didn’t quite work. I was left with no place to go and then lost momentum and it was the same thing a little bit at Turn 3.
“I had to fight with the Renault and the Haas at the beginning of the race and lost a little bit of ground. And obviously we lost a little bit of time at the stop. “So for us it was pretty much damage limitation,” he concluded. “But I think the pace was very good, the tyre management was very good, so a positive day.”
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Following Hamilton’s retirement, some pondered with the two Ferraris running line astern if the call would be made for teammate Kimi Raikkonen to let Vettel by in a repeat of the infamous team orders at the end of the 2002 race in Austria.
“No, why?” Vettel replied when asked if he was expecting such an order. “I was trying to hunt both of them [Max and Kimi] down. Kimi was pushing as hard as he could, I was pushing as hard as I could, I think the bost of us were catching but not enough.
“We had great speed, the difference was made with the tyres today which worked well, the strategy worked well.
“But Max won the race because he deserved to. He did very well managing his tyres to the end. He didn’t have any mistakes by my understanding, I didn’t see him going off, so that’s a strong performance from him.
“Kimi did everything he could,” he declared. “He had one lock-up I believe where he lost a position to Daniel [Ricciardo] but he recovered after that.