Sebastian Vettel Feels ‘over the moon’ with Azerbaijan Podium

Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel is ‘over the moon’ with his second placed finish in a dramatic 2021 Azerbaijan GP.

Vettel started the race on soft tyres as he ran until lap 19 before pitting for hard tyres which he managed to extract pace from to put him third when the red flag came out on lap 48 after Max Verstappen’s crash, which became second after a lock-up put Hamilton out of contention on the restart.

Explaining his happiness at achieving a podium for his new team in just his sixth race at Aston Martin, Vettel said: “I am over the moon and P2 means a great deal to all of us. We did not expect to be on the podium, but we made great progress through the weekend, and the car had strong race pace.”

Vettel also noted that starting 11th on a fresh set of soft tyres was ‘key’ to his performance as he ‘overcut’ Yuki Tsunoda and worked his way up to fourth, as he chased down Hamilton and eventual winner – Sergio Perez with the stronger pace in his car.

Aston Martin CEO and Team Principal, Otmar Szafnauer echoed Vettel’s thoughts as he praised the four-time champion for a ‘extremely well’ drive which delivered a ‘brilliant result’ for everyone at Aston Martin and the team’s first-ever podium in F1

‘we need to investigate’

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Lance Stroll meanwhile drove a brilliant race from 19th on the grid after crashing in Qualifying to fourth when his race came to a sudden end on lap 30 after a sudden tyre-related issue caused his car to snap into the barrier coming onto the main straight to leave the Canadian ‘frustrated’ by the incident

Explaining what happened from his perspective, Stroll said: ” I am not sure what happened to cause me to spin on the straight because there was no sign of any issues, so we need to investigate.”

Stroll though feels that he can take ‘positives’ from what he described as ‘a challenging weekend’ with Aston Martin’s race pace and Vettel’s podium being two notable highlights to take confidence out of heading to France.

Szafnauer added that an investigation is underway into the cause of Stroll’s accident together with Pirelli but praised Stroll for ‘driving superbly’ in his ‘overcut strategy’ until it all went wrong ‘through no fault’ of Stroll’s doing.