2018 Hungarian GP: Sebastian Vettel comments on the slow pit stop. Seb lost time in the pits when his mechanics had trouble swapping his front-left wheel.

Scuderia Ferrari German driver Sebastian Vettel admitted that his slow pit stop in the Hungarian Grand Prix probably did not cost him a chance to win the race. The Maranello team’s driver lost time in the pits when his mechanics had trouble swapping his front-left wheel. It was the third-slowest complete pit stop of the race.

Sebastian Vettel had been hoping to come out of the pits ahead of Valtteri Bottas, who he had built a gap over despite losing time in traffic: “We were faster on an older tyre than Valtteri and pulled a gap. Then I think it’s a bit difficult to foresee the traffic and – knowing how well you go through traffic or not – and in that case I lost quite a lot.” – he explained.

However Seb lost 1.8 seconds compared to Bottas in the pits and emerged behind the Mercedes driver. Had he come out in front, the four-time Formula One world champion would have been around eight seconds behind Hamilton with 30 laps to go, and running on ultra-soft tyres compared to Hamilton’s softs. However Vettel doesn’t think he would have been able to catch and pass the eventual winner: “I think without that it would have been a much more relaxed last part of the race. Probably hunting down Lewis, but with the gap that he had, I think it would have been difficult to catch. And then it’s a completely different story, especially around here to overtake. So I think we could have done the catching bit but not really the overtake, so, in the end it doesn’t change much to the final result.” – Scuderia Ferrari German driver Sebastian Vettel concluded at the end of the 2018 Hungarian Grand Prix.