Aston Martin endured yet another dreadful F1 weekend as they finished outside of points in Barcelona. While Lance Stroll came close with an 11th place finish, Sebastian Vettel managed to cross to the checkered flag in 13th. However, he feels that it could have gone a lot better for them, had they nailed their in-race strategies.
Vettel was running inside the top 10 and was in contention to stay in those places. Unfortunately, the Aston Martin think-tank called him into the pits too early for his third set of tires. This did not allow him to have enough life in his compounds to fight for positions at the end of the race.
“I was running out of tyre life at the end, even though we went for the two-stop strategy. I made quite an early second stop and came out behind Kimi [Räikkönen], which I think hurt my tyres quite a lot,” Vettel analyzed after the Grand Prix event.
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“That is what made it difficult to fight for points. With hindsight, it is always easy to say what you would do differently, but it was difficult to fight the cars around me in the closing laps when they had a tyre advantage.”
Sebastian Vettel hoping that they can take steps forward with a ‘long season still ahead’
The German got his upgrades this weekend after his teammate, Lance Stroll, got them in Portimao. Those helped him to make a step forward with his AMR21 car. Even though he was disappointed with qualifying on Saturday, they did what they were supposed to do.
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Also, there are still a mammoth 19 races to go in this record-breaking 23 Grand Prix calendar. Hence, he knows that they can turn the tide at any moment.
“But we will keep working hard and we know there is a long season still ahead of us. The new parts we had here helped, and we need to keep taking steps forward each weekend.”
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Let’s hope that he has a better turnout when the paddock moves to the glamorous streets of Monaco in two weeks’ time.