The Aston Martin driver was in 14th position when he pitted on lap 36, at which point Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Pérez were fighting for third place. The German returned to the track just ahead of the podium contenders, and on his fresher hard tyres, he kept blocking them both for a few moments while receiving warnings that he should pass to be lapped .
That caused the Mexican to be close to overtaking the Briton, and the FIA stewards did not welcome Sebastian Vettel’s manoeuvres, so they imposed a five-second penalty that sent him to the final 14th place.
“It wasn’t even half a lap and I was already off the line,” the four-time champion said when asked by Motorsport.com about the offence. “Obviously, I can’t disappear, I have a different opinion, but it doesn’t matter.”
Silverstone team boss Mike Krack defended his driver, noting that the German had fresh tires and good pace: “It’s always tough when you come out of the pits on a fresh compound and they beat you on old tyres.”
“It wasn’t any slower at the time, but I think when you look at it, maybe we went too far ahead of Lewis [Hamilton], and you can’t get through a lap like that. Those things happen sometimes,” he said. “We knew we were going to end up in that situation, we had to stop him [Vettel], he realized it, but I think he didn’t see it so badly because he had the rhythm and he told us he could walk away, although if they show you the flag, you’ll they teach it.”
The German’s race had already been spoiled by his first stop, which caused him to drop several positions: “We stopped very early, trying to get to the middle zone, and I think it was the right thing to do. Then we had a too slow stop, I lost as a third or four seconds, I’m not sure, and we lost places to Pierre [Gasly], Alex [Albon], Mick [Schumacher] and Zhou [Guanyu].”
“I was very close to Daniel [Ricciardo], so it wasn’t ideal, that was it,” the German said before speaking about his battle with Haas compatriot Mick Schumacher. “He fell because he was in the points, I came up after starting more or less last, and we met in the middle, it was fun, but you don’t have to take anything away from him.”
Lance Stroll picked up a point thanks to his 10th place finish , although the team hoped the Canadian would also be ahead of Esteban Ocon and his Alpine: “We were never really worried about being out of the top 10.”
“We were eighth at a certain point,” Krack said. “And during that time we thought we could fight with at least one Alpine. But then the safety car came out at a bad time, because we didn’t expect them to stop anymore and we did it with Lance [Stroll].”
“We moved on to catch up with Esteban [Ocon], we were pretty confident because we thought we could hold him or at least make up positions. The safety car came when we were trying to recover, and with the end, they had an extra stop, so we stayed there. “, Sentenced the director of Aston Martin.
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