Sebastian Vettel was happy with the performance of his AMR21 during Sunday’s Mexico City Grand Prix, with the German scoring some valuable points for the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team in seventh position.
The four-time World Champion capitalised on the incidents ahead of him to run eighth in the early laps, and once he cleared Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN’s Antonio Giovinazzi during the pit stops, he was able to secure a good haul of points with seventh place.
“I am quite happy with our performance today,” said Vettel. “We had shown competitive long-run pace on Friday and I knew that if we could hold position on lap one, we would be able to stay there and score points.
“We obviously benefited from the spin for Valtteri [Bottas], although it actually held me up a bit, and the damage to Daniel’s [Ricciardo] car, but we managed to recover a position from [Antonio] Giovinazzi using the strategy.
“After that, I was on my own for most of the race with decent pace. It was a solid weekend by the team and I am pleased we could score some good points.”
“We did what we could from the back, but it was tricky today” – Lance Stroll
Team-mate Lance Stroll was always going to find it difficult to make much impression on Sunday starting from the back of the grid, and so it proved as the Canadian could only end fourteenth at the chequered flag.
Stroll crashed during Qualifying on Saturday but was always destined to start at the back following a pre-race engine change and subsequent penalty, and he was towards the back of the field for much of the afternoon on Sunday.
The Canadian at least had one memorable moment to cherish as he made a superb pass around George Russell at turn one late in the day, but it was never going to be a day where points were a possibility.
“We did what we could from the back, but it was tricky today,” said Stroll. “It is difficult to race from last place here because it is not easy to follow and overtake.
“The car felt good, but we were on the back foot from the start. We were hoping things would happen in front of us to help us gain places, but we needed more to go our way.
“The highlight of my race was the move on George [Russell] late on, but there was not much more we could do today. Now we focus on Brazil and aim to fight for points there.”
