Sebastian Vettel racked up the penalty points on his superlicence after a difficult Aston Martin debut at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The four-time world champion began Sunday with a five-place grid drop and three penalty points after the stewards deemed he had ignored yellow flags in qualifying the previous day.
That put Vettel at the back of the field for the start and, despite a solid start, he didn’t make much progress after that finishing 15th.
“It’s been a tricky race,” he told Sky Sports. “We tried the one-stop, we had to try something different.
“Initially it looked like it wasn’t that bad but towards the end, I was struggling quite a lot with tyres so I don’t think I could have realistically scored points today.”
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However, it was a collision with Esteban Ocon in the closing laps at Turn 1 that largely summed up Vettel’s first race weekend with Aston Martin.
“I thought he would stay right and then when he came back left, he was right ahead of me and I locked [up],” said Vettel. “So it was probably my mistake.
“I spoke with him straight away and I think we agree so there’s not that much to go through.”
The reality though was slightly different, as it was Vettel coming back onto the racing line which put him in the Alpine’s turbulent air, causing the lock-up/collision.
*Ocon stays perfectly straight*
Sebastian Vettel: “Why did he have to change line?” pic.twitter.com/59kJnVMzYD
— Vincent Bruins (@VincentJBruins) March 28, 2021
And later, the stewards declared Seb was “wholly to blame” for the incident, slapping him with two more penalty points on his superlicence, taking his weekend tally to five.
“I’ve rewatched the accident just now,” Ocon commented. “He came in and apologised, he got the penalty for it so it’s all OK. If we were fighting for good points at the time, I would have been more upset, clearly.
“But I stayed on my line and it looks like basically, he comes in my dirty air. So he’s moving to the left, to the normal line, but is losing the grip basically and that’s when he locks up and pushed me in the back.”
Having started the weekend with a clean superlicence, in just one day Vettel now finds himself almost halfway towards the 12 that triggers an automatic race ban.