Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel has praised his team for producing “a little bit of magic” to get both drivers out in Qualifying for 2022 Australian Grand Prix.
Vettel endured a nightmare FP3 session in which he crashed heavily at Turn 10 just 20 minutes into the session, whilst his teammate – Lance Stroll crashed at Turn 11 in the closing minutes of the session to cause a frantic race to repair both cars for Qualifying.
Stroll’s car was first to be repaired but before he could set a lap time, he collided with Williams’ Nicholas Latifi as both drivers tried to get out of the way of Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou which led to the Canadians banging wheels with disastrous consequences.
Reflecting on his “messy” day and that “awkward” incident, Stroll said: “It happened at a narrow point of the track and I was following the curve of it to the right. As I went to the inside, he accelerated at the last second and made contact.”
That incident however handed Vettel an unexpected chance because with just over two minutes left of Q1, he looked unlikely to get out in time to do a lap but the red flag following Stroll’s incident ensured that Aston Martin were able to finish repair work in time.
Vettel proceeded to get out on track and qualify 18th ahead of Latifi and Stroll with a last-gasp effort in his first race weekend of the season after recovering from Coronavirus, following a tense battle to beat the checkered flag to be able to post his lap in time.
The four-time world champion though handed all praise to the mechanics as he insisted that today’s effort was all about the “amazing job” of the mechanics to get both himself and Stroll out on track for a limited period of time.
Vettel also felt that having the chance to post a lap time is a huge positive for the team as he explained: “Just getting out to set a lap was a huge achievement. P18 may not look great on paper, but today it was the result of a little bit of magic.
“Things are not easy at the moment, but we know that the car has more potential and we are working very hard as a team to make progress. I have not had much running this weekend so hopefully we can have a clean race tomorrow and learn more about the car.”
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