Ferrari left frustrated after troubled Canadian outing

40

Ferrari suffered its worst result of 2017 so far, after both drivers lost ground at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel dropped to the back after damaging his front wing after making contact with Max Verstappen's Red Bull's in the first corner. He managed to fight back to fourth place to limit the damage to his championship hopes, but that wasn't enough to cheer him up.

"I wanted to get a trophy," he said afterwards, sounding somewhat deflated despite his impressive comeback effort. "Didn't get one.

"We get the trophy right in front of us at the national anthem at the beginning of the race. 'Here's what you could get," basically.

"Obviously the beginning of the race didn't go our way, but I was still believing we could fight back and probably get a podium.

"In the end when I came back to that group I was fairly confident," he added. "But yeah, one lap short."

"It didn't just fall off! There was contact, but three cars in turn 1 doesn't work. I had a bit of poor position and I need to have a look, maybe I could have done better.

"I was stuck. With Lewis [Hamilton] in front I couldn't brake any deeper or I would push him off. Valtteri [Bottas] was on the left and Max suddenly appeared on the right. I think he saw his gap, which was fair enough.

"He ran over my front wing. You don't do that on purpose because the chance of a puncture is very high," he said. "In the end I was the one that had damage, which was a bit unfortunate."

Canada 'walk in the park' for Hamilton as Vettel fights back

Vettel's team mate Kimi Raikkonen also lost positions at the start of the race. However it was braking issues that really left him unable to fulfil his true potential in the race.

"A difficult first few laps," he agreed. "Not a very good start from us. Then just hard to get past."

Raikkonen found himself stuck behind the two Force India cars for the first stint. Ferrari responded by calling Raikkonen in for an early pit stop on lap 18.

"Once we changed our tactics a bit we actually had a good speed difference but then we had the brake issues so that's how it goes," he explained. "We had quite good speed after the pit stop and were just getting behind the cars in front when the brakes went.

"Obviously an unfortunate thing," he added after finishing the race in seventh place. "Not an easy day."

Want to win a trackday experience? All you have to do is subscribe to our FREE newsletter HERE

Gallery: All the pictures from Montreal

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.