With the two Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team cars fighting for their respective position on track, Sebastian Vettel got up to sixth position and Lance Stroll got up to sixteenth at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, before the latter was forced into retirement late on.
It could have been one better for Vettel, who had strong pace throughout the race. The four-time World Champion had to go into the runoff section at Turn 3, after a botched attempt at overtaking Esteban Ocon failed. This cost the German valuable time, as his chances of a top five diminished. Nevertheless, it was a great result for the Aston Martin driver.
Vettel is aware that he could’ve finished fifth, but recognises that sixth is a “really great” result.
“The team did an amazing pit-stop, which enabled me to jump Lewis [Hamilton]. After that, I was sure I had got past Esteban [Ocon], but I thought he would battle more for the position, so I took to the escape road and lost some time. Without that incident, I think I could have battled for fifth position. Nevertheless, this is a great result.
“Sixth position is really great – I think we can all be pleased with that result. We have been pushing the limits of this car, and it is starting to pay off for us now. Today, we were faster than Alfa Romeo and matched Alpine and Alpha Tauri, and that changes the game for us a little bit.”
“It is a shame that we had to retire the car” – Lance Stroll
On top of having crashed twice during Qualifying, Stroll was pretty inconsolable after having to retire on lap forty-six. It was a disappointing race up to that point anyway for the Canadian, who was well outside of the points. Stroll will be hoping for better fortunes at his home Grand Prix this weekend.
“The engineers could see the car was suffering from a vibration issue, so they asked me to retire the car. We are still not quite sure what the problem was, so we will have to do some work over the next week to investigate it and fix things. Sebastian proved our car has the pace, so hopefully we can come back stronger for my home race in Canada next week, which I am really looking forward to.”
