Sebastian Vettel says he had more pace in hand during the Monaco Grand Prix which he was unable to show behind Nico Rosberg.
The Ferrari driver spent the whole race behind his fellow German, rarely dropping more than two seconds off the back of the Mercedes. The one time he could attempt to jump ahead was during the pit stops, but with only one lap to attempt the undercut the gap proved too big to erase as Ferrari struggled with tyre warm-up.
Vettel says he was able to go quicker than Rosberg at times, always responding to any change of pace, until the tyre warm-up issues were highlighted following the late safety car period when Rosberg pulled away for victory.
"I think it’s natural that the gaps are smaller on this track," Vettel said. "It’s a shorter track so that’s normal. I think in the race we were a lot closer than [qualifying]. Obviously there’s a lot of things that we still need to learn and understand.
"Taking the restart is similar more or less to what caught us out [on Saturday], so that’s something we need to work on quickly to try and understand, but in the race itself I think for the majority of the race we were on a very good pace. Obviously I knew that it was pointless really to put Nico under pressure too much, because I would just burn my tyres.
"You don’t know what might be coming at the end, a safety car etc, and at the end there was a safety car. There was a point when I was driving around thinking ‘we can’t be at Monaco without a safety car’ and then I think four or five laps later there was a safety car. You obviously have to prepare a bit for the unknown, but I think the pace was good. I was happy."
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