Vettel: ‘I got lucky’ in FP1 crash

Sebastian Vettel says he didn’t expect to spin in his FP1 crash and was “lucky” that the damage to the wasn’t more significant.

The Ferrari driver spun into the barriers at Turn 19 towards the end of the earlier session but only damaged the rear-left of the car.

“It was a bit of a surprise, I didn’t expect to actually spin,” Vettel said after FP2, in which he finished in P4, just behind his team-mate.

“I knew that going in I would have to catch the rear, it didn’t quite work, so it was a bit unfortunate.

“But there was no damage other than the rim, so I got lucky.”

Charles Leclerc almost had the exact same crash in FP2 but managed to keep control of his car.

“The whole third sector is pretty difficult because it’s overheating in the rear, but especially this corner,” Leclerc said.

“As soon as you go a bit too wide, you lose a bit of grip, and I’ve been surprised by that.”

Despite this, Leclerc was pleased with the session following a poor FP1 which he described as “one of the hardest sessions of the year.”

“We worked very well between the sessions, and we gained quite a lot of performance for FP2,” he added.

“FP2 was pretty positive, apart from the race pace on the softs, where I think we can do better and we need to work quite a bit on that.

“But on the hard, the race pace was very strong, so that is a good thing.”

19 points separate the two Ferrari men with one race to go, and both will need to have strong races if they wish to surpass Max Verstappen in the Driver Standings.

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