Sebastian Vettel doesn’t consider his crash while leading the German Grand Prix as the decisive moment in this year’s world championship fight.
On Sunday in Mexico, the Ferrari driver watched on as Lewis Hamilton finished fourth which was more than enough to wrap up a fifth title, coming out on top in a straight fight with Vettel for the second straight year.
The situation was very different in the first half of the season, however, with the German holding the lead but the momentum seemed to switch when Hamilton won from 14th on the grid at Hockenheim as a rain shower saw Sebastian go off at the Sachskurve.
“I can’t be too hard on myself with what happened in Germany because it’s not like… I’ve done much bigger mistakes this year but obviously it was the most costly one,” he said.
“Unfortunately it’s part of racing: when you push you might be sometimes pushing a little bit too hard. I chose the wrong corner as well. But anyway, it’s behind me and I’m not really thinking about that too much.”
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Instead, Vettel believes Ferrari’s drop in performance during the final flyaways has been most critical as a number of upgrades and, admittedly, errors saw the Italian team falter.
“I think, yeah, from Singapore onwards we just didn’t have the pace to keep up with Mercedes for a couple of races and then obviously some other things happened on top that didn’t help and we couldn’t score the points due to mistakes that we did, mistakes that I did. So it didn’t help,” he reflected.
With two more races still to go and positive recent results for Ferrari in Austin and Mexico, Vettel is keen to continue pushing on despite obvious disappointment at seeing the title lost.
“I don’t want to make a big deal about today. As with the question before, you could see it sort of coming, but for sure it’s different. I focus on my own, I focus on my car,” he said.
“It’s what you work for the whole year and when you are not anymore in control, it’s obviously not a great moment but I think it’s normal as well to have that moment of disappointment and that you are a bit down but I think I will be as strong as I can be in two weeks’ time heading to Brazil.
“Because that’s what my team deserves and that’s what all the guys at home in Maranello deserve and all on top all the people that have supported me, Kimi, myself and the whole team, all the Tifosi all year.
“Maybe, for now, I’m not the happiest guy, but in two weeks’ time I’m allowed to step into the car that I always dreamt of driving, so plenty of things to be happy about.”