Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel was left fuming about his late collision with Narain Karthikeyan of HRT which cost him a points finish in the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Vettel was fourth for most of the second half of the Formula One race before he collided with back—marker Karthikeyan with nine laps left, puncturing his left rear tire. The Red Bull driver had to visit the pit and finished 11th.
“To lose the race how I did is very frustrating,” Vettel said. “Some people need to look more where they are going.”
The two—time defending world champion’s day was made even more difficult by the loss of radio communication with his crew in the closing stages. He was unable to hear frantic instructions to park his damaged car to protect it from overheating as a result of brake duct damage caused in the collision.
“I didn’t hear anything from the team at the end. There were problems with the car after the incident, but I wanted to see the checkered flag,” Vettel said.
Team principal Christian Horner said he wanted to stop Vettel’s car for safety reasons.
“Thankfully, his car got to the end without failing. But the incident cost Sebastian at least a fourth—place finish today,” Horner said.
Teammate Mark Webber finished fourth, saying he was unable to get the best out of the intermediate tires in the period after the restart following a long rain delay.
“Still, plenty of positives for us out of this weekend,” Webber said. “We would’ve liked a slightly better result but there were some inspired calls we saw that with some strategy up the front, and hats off to those guys.
“When you’re in a position to roll the dice a little bit, you might get a double six, and those guys did today.”
The result left Vettel on 18 points from two races, 17 behind championship leader and Malaysia winner Fernando Alonso. Webber was on 24 points the first time he has led his teammate since 2010.
The Red Bulls were not the only champoinship contenders to have a bad day at Sepang.
McLaren driver Jensen Button accepted the blame in also colliding with Karthikeyan, damaging his front wing early on and putting him last in the running order. He finished 14th, but the Australian GP winner could still see some positives.
“Today was a pretty difficult day pretty much everything that could have gone wrong in the race did go wrong,” Button said. “It just wasn’t a good day for me today. The amazing thing is that I’m still third in the championship after not scoring any points.”
Mercedes driver Michaael Schumacher, who started from third, was hit from behind by Lotus’ Romain Grosjean on the opening lap. With his car still lacking pace, Schumacher struggled up to 10th and the team’s only point of the season.
“It’s clear from today that there is still a lot of work for us to do to take our pace from qualifying into the race, and I am sure the guys are already thinking very hard about finding a solution,” Schumacher said. “But this will not be done from one race to another. It will take some time, and we need to give it that time.”
