Nico Rosberg and Max Verstappen have offered differing views on the potential effect Sebastian Vettel’s mistake at the German Grand Prix could have going forward.
The Ferrari driver skidded off while leading at the Sachskurve in damp conditions as rain showers caused chaos during Sunday’s race at Hockenheim, allowing Lewis Hamilton to come through the field from 14th and take an unlikely victory.
That led to a big swing in the championship as the Mercedes driver went from facing a likely 20-point deficit to his main rival in the standings to a 17-point advantage ahead of this weekend’s race in Hungary.
“I think he’s going to remember that as one of the darkest moments of his whole career,” Rosberg suggested in a post-race blog.
“In front of his home crowd here with such a chance to get a huge points haul over Lewis, he puts it away like that. Such a big mistake – he threw it away.”
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The 32-year-old former champion also believes the place that Vettel went off shows he was pushing too hard.
“He could have gone a little bit slower and taken it easy, but he chucked it into the wall,” he said.
“That’s the one corner where there’s no margin for error, so in that corner, you’ve got to take even more reserves, and he didn’t. He went over the edge.”
Having had to deal with the conditions himself, however, Verstappen, who rarely sees eye-to-eye with the German, defended the four-time world champion.
“It was super tricky out there, especially in that corner. Even if you experience the slightest lock up there, you immediately go off,” the Red Bull driver said.
“So things like this can happen. It could have happened to someone else just as easily.
“You just try to find good grip everywhere, but you don’t want to take too many risks because you already have some good points in the bag,” the 20-year-old added.
“You don’t want to risk losing those by going off. Dealing with that risk is very difficult. If you lock up for just a moment, you fly off the track.”
