‘Lacklustre’ Vettel ‘found his mojo’ in Monaco

Henry Valantine
Sebastian Vettel Aston Martin

Norbert Haug backs Sebastian Vettel to take another step at Spanish GP.

Ross Brawn says he had been doubting Sebastian Vettel over his “lacklustre” form, so was pleased to see him back in the groove in Monaco.

The Aston Martin driver jumped up three places from his starting position in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix in what was comfortably his highest finish for the team since moving from Ferrari.

Four-time former World Champion Vettel won the fan-voted Driver of the Day award for making his way up to a strong P5 finish in a much-improved showing, having qualified P8.

With that, Brawn was happy to see the German get back to form around Monte Carlo.

“It was great to see Sebastian Vettel back in the points,” Brawn wrote in his post-race column on Formula1.com.

“I will openly admit I’ve had my doubts about him in recent times, and he’s been a bit lacklustre in his final years at Ferrari and then when he joined Aston Martin.

“But in Monaco, Sebastian definitely found his mojo. His performance in the race was very strong and reminded us of what we had come to expect from the four-time World Champion.”

Check out all the latest Sebastian Vettel/Aston Martin merchandise via the official Formula 1 store

Vettel was in a buoyant mood after his first points-scoring finish with his new team, making his race strategy work by managing to jump ahead of both Pierre Gasly and Lewis Hamilton at the pit-stops by successfully executing an overcut on the AlphaTauri and Mercedes drivers.

Having previously struggled with race pace, he was pleased to be able to make his gamble pay off and bring a solid haul of points back to the garage with him – adding that he won’t be “grumpy” after that result.

“I think it’s a great result for us,” Vettel told Sky F1. “We can be very happy also having two cars in the points. Great decisions today on the pit wall and good pace in the car when it mattered, so I think that made the difference for us today.

“Obviously I knew around that [pit window] time it would be crucial to make our way.

“Chris, our engineer, told me ‘head down, now is the time’… the tyres weren’t fresh anymore but I was able to still go faster than I had been to that point, and then going a little bit faster on the next lap made the difference.

“The pit-stop was just good enough…it was very tough with Pierre coming out.”

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