Traffic hampered Vettel's progress

Sebastian Vettel appeared very frustrated after the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka. Despite his penalty on the starting grid of three places after his contact with Nico Rosberg in Malaysia last Sunday, the German seemed for a time able to compete for the top 3 in the race against the Red Bull de Max Verstappen and Mercedes de Lewis Hamilton but was unable to take the checkered flag.

“I think today we had the second fastest car, believes Vettel. So it was a question of time against Max Verstappen, but he returned as soon as he could to maintain his track position, which worked well for him. »

With a strategy that differed from his rivals, the four-time world champion began his final stint on soft tires, just in the wake of Hamilton's Mercedes. But the Briton was able to escape without great difficulty in the face of the Ferrari, unable to hold his own in traffic on the Japanese circuit.

“It’s a fact that I wasted a lot of time with the blue flags, proclaims the former Red Bull driver. I always had the cars delayed in sector 1, where they can't get out of the way, so I was losing a lot of time. It was probably at this moment that I lost contact with Lewis, who always seemed to be overtaking the cars on the straight. »

The Scuderia Ferrari driver noted, however, that his SF16-H no longer displayed the same level of performance as at the start of the event. “The pace was probably not enough to fight for the podium. »

Find the full report and analysis of the Japanese Grand Prix, produced by our special correspondents in Suzuka, in issue 2084 of AUTOhebdo, available tomorrow evening in digital version and this Wednesday on newsstands.