Sebastian Vettel’s frustration with Ferrari was on display during and after another difficult race at Silverstone on Sunday.
The four-time world champion’s race began poorly with a spin on the exit of Abbey at the start and then, as he tried to make his way back through the field, a decision by the Scuderia to pit put him into traffic, leading Seb to tell the team they “messed up” on the radio.
“Well we spoke this morning and said there was no point pitting knowing, knowingly, knowing that we will run into traffic and that’s exactly what we did,” Vettel said, explaining his outburst.
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“I had enough speed to stay out. Those who were ahead of me after my pit stop were doing exactly the same lap times as I did on the older tyres.
“We went also onto a hard tyre, which we then only had on for 10 laps, probably not even that, so it didn’t make any sense.
“I mean why would you put the hard for 10 laps and put the medium for 20 laps. So I was running out of tyres towards the end so yeah, not I guess not the best work we all could have done today.
“Even with the bad first lap, we could have gained a lot of ground.”
Vettel’s most interesting comment came talking to Germany’s RTL, when he wondered if the reason for his stop was a lack of trust from Ferrari to have he and teammate Charles Leclerc running close on track.
“Maybe we didn’t have the courage to let Charles overtake us, even though he had a different strategy, and we preferred to rather have me stop to avoid him,” he suggested with ‘we’ being the Ferrari pitwall.
That also came as the 33-year-old was outclassed by his Monegasque teammate for the second straight weekend at Silverstone, as he finished a lowly 12th.
“We have had two very bad weeks, I don’t know what happened in terms of pace,” he told Sky Sports.
“Certainly not the best days for me at the moment, it’s a bit frustrating. I will try to do my best and keep calm as much as possible looking forward.”