Sebastian Vettel’s underwhelming Aston Martin debut saw him leave the Bahrain Grand Prix with five penalty points on his superlicence for two different incidents during the weekend.
Vettel struggled throughout his first weekend with his new team and finished 15th of 16 finishers, ahead of only Haas’ Mick Schumacher.
Late in the race, Vettel drove into the back of Alpine’s Esteban Ocon at Turn 1. Both drivers managed to get their cars started again after the collision but it forced Vettel to pit.
Vettel suggested Ocon had changed his line under braking but the stewards disagreed, handing Vettel a 10-second time penalty and two penalty points on his superlicence.
The verdict read: « The Stewards reviewed multiple angles of video evidence and telemetry and determined that Car 5 was wholly to blame for the contact at Turn 1. »
Vettel had already been given a grid penalty and three penalty points on Saturday for failing to slow for yellow flags during the first session of qualifying. Vettel qualified 18th, so the penalty dropped him to the back of the grid for the start of the race.
F1 drivers get an automatic one-race ban if they accrue 12 penalty points or more over a rolling 12 month period. Vettel has five from the first weekend alone, although he had a spotless record ahead of the race weekend.
Before the Ocon collision, Vettel was attempting an optimistic one-stop strategy but he doubted a points finish would have been possible with a clean race.
« It’s been a tricky race, we tried the one stop, we had to try something different, » he said.
« Initially it looked like it wasn’t that bad but first stint but towards the end I was struggling quite a bit with tyres so I don’t think we could have realistically scored points.
On the Ocon incident and penalty, he added: « I was trying to cut back to the left, but Esteban was moving left as well. When I was right behind him I locked the fronts and hit him straight on. Obviously that was not great for both of our races. »
https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/31154246/vettel-gets-five-penalty-points-aston-martin-debut
