After almost being overtaken by Fernando Alonso at the start, Vettel drove off to a solitary race until the safety car was deployed, putting more than 10 seconds between him and the Spaniard until the first pit stop. Returning to the track in 2nd place, behind teammate Mark Webber, the German made an honest mistake just when the SC was to go in – stood more than 10 car lengths behind Webber at the restart – which was sanctioned by the FIA stewards with a drivethrough penalty
The first time Vettel showed his frustration towards the stewards was while doing his pit lane penalty, when he gestured with his hands from the cockpit. In the end however, he understood it was his mistake to begin with, but was left disappointed with what could have been an easy win before the summer break.
“He's obviously frustrated after this race, but he wears his heart on his sleeve. You could see on the podium he was desperately disappointed, but it's part of a learning curve,” said Horner, who denied having radioed to Vettel to leave that much space between him and Webber before the restart.
“We'd had a few radio issues with Seb where it wasn't clear if he could fully hear us or not, which is why I spoke to him a couple of times in the race. But he knew he had made a mistake because he immediately radioed his engineer. It was one of those things that for whatever reason caught him out.”
“What would have been a relatively comfortable victory turned into a third place, but on a day when Lewis didn't score any points and Jenson scored very few. So it's a great team finish with a dominant victory and third,” added Horner, whose team is now leading the manufacturers' race (finally) after 12 rounds in the 2010 season.
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