Vettel didn’t expect P2 after “queuing the whole race”
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Sebastian Vettel was pleased to make the most of mistakes from Ferrari’s rivals to finish second in Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix.Vettel started fourth but finished second after taking advantage of a pitlane collision between Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas.The German jumped Bottas when the Mercedes driver was forced into a second stop due to a puncture following the collision, while Verstappen received a five-second time penalty that dropped him from second on the road to fourth.“Certainly we didn’t quite expect it but the way the race went we were able to benefit from the mistakes people made,” Vettel said.“Obviously Valtteri got squeezed into the pitlane and got a puncture so we were able to get that position and with the penalty that Max had it was about staying with them.“Antonio Giovinazzi didn’t quite know whether to let me go and I lost like two, two and a half seconds, so I was queuing the whole race with the Mercedes’ struggling.“Then suddenly I lose three seconds, and obviously the target was to stay within the five seconds [to Max Verstappen] but it wasn’t a problem in the end.”Despite claiming Ferrari’s best result of the 2019 season so far, Vettel admits his team cannot be completely satisfied with the overall result from what proved to be a difficult weekend in Monaco for the Scuderia, with teammate Charles Leclerc retiring after being eliminated from Q1 during qualifying.“A good result but not a good weekend for us,” Vettel explained.“We lost one car yesterday in Q1 and I’m not sure what happened with Charles today but it’s always difficult when you start further back.“Not the luckiest race for us as a team but the pace wasn’t there and we kind of fumbled into second place.“So we did everything we could but certainly we didn’t have enough pace to put the pressure on to try and go for the win.“We tried to stay in range,” he added. “I wanted to put some more pressure on, I just struggled with my tyres, not as badly as Lewis and Max’s, but mine were just not getting hot.“It was a bit tricky but a great result and we have a lot of work to do – we are not quick enough compared to these guys.”
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