• Hungarian Grand Prix

Vettel 'sleeping' at the restart

ESPNF1 Staff
August 1, 2010 « Rubens fumes at 'dangerous' Schumacher move | »
Sebastian Vettel was clearly unhappy to finish third © Getty Images
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Sebastian Vettel admitted that he was 'sleeping' at the restart when his chances of victory evaporated after he was handed a drive through penalty for being too far behind the safety car.

Vettel had led the race before he dropped behind Webber after his first stop. He then dropped too far behind the safety car, leading to his penalty.

"With the safety car it was a late call so I just managed to come in," said Vettel. "After that usually is was an easy race because we had the pace advantage and knew we had the fastest car. At the restart I was sleeping. I was relying too much on radio and somewhere in the first stint I lost the radio connection and I didn't hear anything.

"I was looking at the boards and waiting for the instruction when to come in but I didn't see the lights go out. Usually the leader drops back and dictates the pace. Mark was very close so I was warming up my car and sure we had another lap then when I saw Mark and the safety car at the second last corner with a big gap to myself I realised it must be restart. So I was caught out so I lost a lot of momentum which was not the intention.

Vettel added that he would have easily won the race had it not been for his mistake.

"Then I got drive through. Pretty unlucky I would say and obviously I am very disappointed because it would have been a walk in the park today."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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