Sebastian Vettel gave his Brazilian Grand Prix a “one out of ten” after falling to a lowly sixth at Interlagos.
Starting second and on the Soft compound tyre, many, even Mercedes, considered him the favourite for victory, however, after being overtaken by Valtteri Bottas, Kimi Raikkonen and Max Verstappen in the early laps it quickly became clear he would struggle.
Such was the German’s lack of pace that Raikkonen would be eased ahead at the instruction of his Ferrari team after Vettel had got in front after the pit-stop phase.
“It’s pretty straightforward, Kimi came out of the pits with a fresher set of tyres and I had a couple of laps to try and get something done with Valtteri – when it didn’t work, the team asked me to let him have a go so no problems with that,” Sebastian said.
“I like Kimi and I was happy to let him get a shot and he made it [to the podium] so I’m happy for him.”
When a recovering Daniel Ricciardo made his way past Vettel dropping him to sixth, Ferrari then opted to pit for a second time but it wouldn’t bring any improvement.
“I tried everything but obviously in terms of the result, I would rate it as one out of ten, and that’s with one being bad,” he said.
“I don’t think we were on top of the car, the tyres. I don’t think it was an advantage to start on the Soft compound tyre, because the Supersoft lasted a long time – longer than I think we all expected. But that’s how it is.”
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It does appear, however, Vettel’s race was compromised by another issue, which team boss Maurizio Arrivabene revealed post-race.
“Right from the formation lap, we became aware of a problem with a sensor on Seb’s car,” he said, with Vettel initially failing to get away on the formation lap.
“This meant that, for the whole race, he had to run different settings to those we would have normally used and that made the car difficult to drive.”