Sebastian Vettel played down the role Valtteri Bottas had in causing their incident at Turn 2 late on during the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The two drivers were battling for second behind eventual race winner Lewis Hamilton, as a poor pit-stop had cost the Ferrari driver a valuable two seconds which saw him come out behind the Finn.
Having been unable to get past straight away on the Ultrasoft tyre, Vettel finally made his move with five laps to go, however, as he looked to out-drag the Mercedes on the short straight after Turn 1, the pair would make contact under braking as the German came across.
“I felt, all of a sudden, I got hit from behind,” he explained after the race.
“For him [Bottas] there wasn’t anywhere to go, I was ahead. I don’t blame him – I think he had no grip and when you’re so close it’s very difficult to stop the car and I think he locked up and we made contact.”
While most did consider Bottas the guiltier party in the incident, though the stewards saw no reason to investigate, an argument made by Sky Sports commentator Martin Brundle was that Vettel has misjudged the location of the Mercedes as he looked to cut off the inside.
“I wanted to make sure I didn’t overshoot the braking, I hit the brakes and when I turned in I felt the contact from behind,” the 31-year-old said.
“My rears were in better shape and I got the inside track outside of Turn 1, I had DRS. I was quite comfortable into Turn 2 knowing I got him.”
It would be Bottas that came off worse after the collision with a damaged front wing, but Sebastian, who went on to finish second, admits the repercussions could have been different.
“I was lucky I could catch the car [after the contact] and lucky I didn’t get a puncture,” he claimed.
“The team told me straight away that the tyres look fine. I had a feeling the car was fine and it was until the end.”
More broadly, it was still an unsatisfactory ending to a weekend that had looked so good before rain changed everything in qualifying and several small errors prevented Vettel from showing his pace from practice.
“Yeah, it was a tough race. Obviously, we were a little bit out of position for the speed that we had. I thought we could go with Lewis today in terms of race pace,” the four-time champion said.
“We had a little bit of an issue with the pit stop, as you mentioned, and we came out behind Valtteri [Bottas]. Then I realised right away that I couldn’t get him, because his tyres were still fresh so I was sitting back and waiting and trying to line up everything for the last 10 laps.
“It worked because his tyres were getting worse and worse and I knew, obviously, how long those yellow tyres lasted from the first stint that I had and I was quite confident I could get him at the end.
“Obviously, P2 is not what we really wanted this weekend but I think it is the maximum we could get today.”
