25/10/2018
NEWS STORY
In three races since the summer break, while attempting a move on a rival driver, Sebastian Vettel has touched said rival causing his own car to spin violently on its front axle. So similar have the incidents been that some are wondering if the issue might not lie with the driver so much but have their roots in a mechanical cause.
Speaking ahead of this weekend's Mexican Grand Prix, the German admitted that he is similarly baffled.
"Maybe I need to try the outside next time, maybe I don't spin," he told reporters when asked about the eerie similarity of the incidents witnessed in Italy, Japan and last week at COTA.
"Obviously you want to have the inside to the corner, that doesn't change," he continued. "But I don't know. The closer you are to another car, you lose some downforce, and obviously the spins I had were all quite weird because there was not much I could have done differently. It's not like I had gone in too fast or would have spun on my own at that speed, not at all.
"So I guess there must be some sort of hole or something being on the inside of a car in that position," he suggested. "Obviously on all three occasions I wasn't clearly ahead, at best side-by-side, so as I said, maybe next time I try the outside.
"The main thing is that fundamentally I didn't try to do anything silly or stupid," he concluded. "I wasn't hard-headed trying to do something that would never work. Obviously now it has happened a couple of times, too much. So next time there will be a gap, I am sure I will go for a gap, but surely it is in the back of your head trying to keep the car facing the right direction."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Mexico City, here.