Sebastian Vettel says splitting Mercedes pair Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap was “crucial” for his victory prospects at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Vettel passed Hamilton around the outside of Turn 1 to move into second position and remained within reach of leader Bottas, who was struggling after a technical glitch left him running with too high tyre pressures.
Vettel adopted the undercut, and benefited from a Safety Car period shortly after, to move into the lead, and he pulled away from the Mercedes pair to register his second win of the season.
“The start, obviously it was crucial for us to get between [the Mercedes drivers], to not allow them to get in their rhythm, pull away, do their thing,” Vettel said.
“So, it upset them a bit. I think we all had more or less the same start. Mine initially was maybe a tiny bit better than Lewis, which put me just about side-by-side.
“But their car is really long so it’s a long way to get side-by-side – but then I think I benefitted from the act I had a clear track ahead, Lewis was a bit stuck with Valtteri and it’s a bit of a tricky one to judge, so I could just take lots of risk under braking and get the move done.
“Then, the final stint, obviously we had quite a decent gap plus the safety margin of Lewis’ penalty – which I wasn’t sure why but it didn’t matter at that point – and I just tried to control the gap to Valtteri, maybe pulling away a little bit and at that point just controlling the gap.
“When I faced the traffic I lost a lot of time but then obviously he [Hamilton] had to face traffic as well. In the end it was safe enough.
“At the beginning of the stint I really didn’t push at all, just took it easy and responded to what those two guys were doing, which obviously helped me at the end because I had a lot of tyres left.”
