Sebastian Vettel: “I was fighting as much as I could”

Sebastian Vettel has kept his championship challenge firmly on track with a solid fourth place in Hungary, but the German felt he had the speed to do a lot better.

After starting third Vettel was passed by Jenson Button at the first corner, and having lost time behind the McLaren he was also jumped at the second pit stops by Kimi Raikkonen.

Later he made an extra pit stop to finish the race on fresh tyres, having got far enough ahead of Fernando Alonso to ensure that he would hold onto fourth even with a stop.

“I think it was probably not the result we could have had today,” said Vettel. “Our speed was a little bit better than that. Jenson was quite slow, and we lost quite a lot. But obviously you can’t just pit and come out in clean air, there’s traffic. Other people weren’t that much slower either.

“We thought that we’d try something. Obviously it could have been the case that their tyres fall ‘off the cliff’, which wasn’t the case. So we’ll try next time.

“I think a two-stop would not have change anything, so it was just following Romain around. Trying to something different was I think the right thing. It was marginal coming out ahead of Fernando, but it was good. It could have been a different story, their tyres could have fallen off.

“It didn’t happen this time. We did everything we could from a strategy point of view, which lost a little bit too much in the first corner and particularly to Jenson, who was very slow, and we lots too much time to the guys ahead.”

Vettel insisted that he wasn’t too disappointed.

“I’m not frustrated, it was not a boring afternoon for me. I was fighting as much as I could, I was pushing hard. That’s what I’m here for. We finished fourth, we didn’t win. If I win then I’m happy. If you’re fourth – today I have to accept it, but you’re not as happy as if you win.

“I finished ahead of Fernando, but not a lot. Race pace was quite good so it’s up to us to have better starts in the future. And probably one or two better steps in qualifying, and then it’s a different race.”