Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel can wrap up second place in the Formula One drivers’ championship this weekend, but, looking back, he’s still wondering if it could have been one better.
How does this track look so far, and what preparations can you put in for a completely new circuit like this?
We try to collect as much data and information as we can. The GP2 cars tested here last weekend and I’ve done some laps on the simulator, too. Other than that, we come here, do the usual track walk and get some information about the circuit. It looks quite interesting – quite challenging.
Have you put the disappointment of losing out to Jenson Button behind you?
I think it’s normal to be disappointed. In the end, you have to see the positives. It was a very good season for us, and we learned a lot of lessons. All in all, there are a lot of things we could do better next time, but for now the most important thing is to focus on securing second position in the championship and having a good race.
In Brazil, you said second wasn't important… so, it is now?
Sometimes, things you say out of the car… you don’t have a lot of time to think. Generally, sure, I’m not here to come second or third. For now though, third is worse than second, so it would be good to be ‘vice-champion’.
'I think we were strong enough to finish in the top five in every race this year… and sometimes we didn’t do that'
If someone had told you at the beginning of the season that you could take second in the championship, wouldn't you have been happy, though?
I think this year was special because the rules changed so much – you just didn’t know what to expect. We had a very good feeling about the car, but we didn’t really know going to Australia how competitive we could be. But when you do find that out, it’s then very important to be competitive from beginning to end, and as it turned out, this year was very up and down, with a lot of teams at the top. But if you have a car good enough for second, then it should be good enough to go one further.
Was there a point when you felt it slipping away?
Looking back, I don’t think there’s only one race where things went wrong. Sometimes, you may find yourself in a situation where you’re not strong enough to win, but you can finish third, fourth or fifth and collect good points. I think we were strong enough to finish in the top five in every race this year, which no one else was, except maybe at Monza, and sometimes we didn’t do that. You may call it bad luck or whatever, but there were some mistakes with strategy or from myself, and that led to five races where we didn’t score any points. For the first part of the season, when Jenson won every race, we were handicapped with the double diffuser story, but from Silverstone onwards we definitely had the better car. But the damage was done by then.
Is banking those ‘safe’ points a hard lesson you’ve learned?
Yeah, for sure. In the end, we are a team and we made those decisions at the time because we thought they were for the best. Some of ours clearly weren’t the smartest, but it’s something we can improve on for next year. I also have to say that everyone was expecting us to change one of our engines before the end of the season, but we’re here and we haven’t done that, so compliments to Renault for that – we made it. There are things we could have done better, but the most important thing is to learn from those situations.
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