Vettel believes an early mistake cost him a higher F1 result at the French GP | F1

While Vettel ran for a long time on the hard tire in the first stint of the race, Vettel ran too far in the long, sweeping right Le Beausset curve and cost him around three seconds.

The German managed to continue his series of top ten placements and was just behind the trio Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso.

Vettel ended up almost two seconds behind Alonso in the battle for eighth place, so the four-time champion thought he could have done better without his mistake.

“Good race to catch up, to have both cars in the points, not many points nine and ten, but better than none,” said Vettel. “We had to try something different and I think it worked.

On the subject of matching items

“Unfortunately I had a slip here in the first stint, I was eliminated and lost a lot of time, otherwise we might have been closer to the group with better tires and scored more points, but you can feel that it’s pretty windy and the car was inconsistent so it was hard to judge and I pushed pretty hard and maybe this lap was a little too long. “

After a difficult start to the season, in which Vettel did not score a goal in the first four rounds, he has experienced an impressive rise again.

On the subject of matching items

Vettel explained his improvement in form: “Yes, I think the first races didn’t really go out of direction, now it seems a bit calmer. I’m pretty happy in the car, it does what I want.

“I think the team is generally strong. Of course we’re not where we want to be with the car, but I think the team is doing very well overall, we’ve caught up a bit, which is important, we’re in the mix, it’s very close and we have points fetched, we’re fighting with AlphaTauri and Alpine, it’s going to be a long year, hopefully we’ll get better and better and start to have a small lead, but it’s a long way. “