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Vettel in Formula 1: "They steal the race" - Sport
- Sebastian Vettel is second behind Lewis Hamilton at the Canadian Grand Prix because the race director has given him a five-second time penalty.
- Vettel is very angry about it: "I feel like a winner, I was the first to cross the finish line."
- He even reverses the placement tags after the race.
- Click here for the results of Formula 1.
The message Sebastian Vettel now felt like a cynical blow of fate befell him twelve laps before the end of the race. Vettel realized at that moment that he would receive a five-second penalty, the race stewards had just decided. Vettel was just leading the field at the Canadian Grand Prix, heading for his first race win in 287 days, and behind him Lewis Hamilton was rolling at exactly 2.7 seconds. Now no nobelpreiswürdigen computing skills were necessary to determine where Vettel would land after the finish line in the final bill. Anyway, behind Hamilton. And so one might look it over Vettel, that he now began to rant and curse.
He had already traveled to Canada 55 points behind Hamilton and the World Cup seemed to be almost lost anyway. And now he also received a penalty of five seconds. "I could not go anywhere, I saw him, but I could not go anywhere," he sparked at his command post. "Where the hell on I'm supposed to go?" Where the hell was he supposed to go, Vettel shouted into the microphone. "I had turf on the tires, they steal the race!"
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And so it came as it should come: The spectators in Montreal saw how Vettel crossed the finish line first in the Ferrari. And shortly thereafter, viewers saw Lewis Hamilton climb to the top step on the podium. For the first time since Lewis Hamilton in 2008 in Belgium, a driver had lost the race victory due to a punishment of race stewards.
What happened?
Then, the 48th lap: a mistake
Two-thirds of this race had been driven on the Ile Notre-Dame, when Hamilton appeared in Vettel's rear-view mirror. Both pilots had put up hard tires, but Hamilton coped better with his. He drove faster, the gap melted for two seconds. Hamilton came closer, closer and closer. Only eight tenths separated them. And Vettel had difficulties. "The numbers on your display are correct. Respond to it!" Sparked his command post. Vettel drove now slower. Maybe his car was running hot, or he was required to save fuel. Then, the 48th lap: a mistake. In turn three, he lost control of the rear, cut short over the meadow. When he returned to the track, he almost crashed into the Mercedes.
The race commissioner examined the incident, came to the conclusion that he had returned to the track in a dangerous way. That's what Hamilton saw. "So dangerous" was Vettel's maneuver, he sparked immediately afterwards. So dangerous. Vettel had to hold on to 17 laps, 74 kilometers, which now had to happen to him like 1000. Instead of resigning, he presented the fastest race lap. He gave gas. Apparently he really did not suspect that he would still be punished.
The punishment might have been hard. But she was understandable. And it was like this: Vettel had made a mistake. That's why he had even rolled across the lawn. "Of course you do not want to win like that," Hamilton said after the race, when he gave one of those flash interviews that Vettel did not even see. "But I forced him into the mistake, so he drove through the grass." He still tried, Hamilton said, to physically overtake Vettel on the track. Not just mathematically.
After this race in Montreal, Vettel's frustration erupted, which had built up over the season so disappointing for Scuderia. Vettel, who did not park his race car in the designated area of the course, grabbed the number "2", which was actually intended for his car on the way to the award ceremony - and placed them in front of the winning car of Hamilton instead of the "1". In the stands, the Ferrari fans cheered Vettel's tattoo. For a moment, the side of Vettel that he showed again and again in his career came to light again. That of a driver, which is not always easy to lose. Who can ever drive. The two years ago in Baku Hamilton in the side was driven during a safety car phase. Vettel, the belly pilot whose greatest strength and greatest weakness are his emotions.
"People should be asked what they think," Vettel later said. But people should stop whistling Hamilton. After all, he was not the one who made this decision. Hamilton stuck to his point of view: "I took the curve quite normally, but normally you have to make sure that you return safely to the track."