Vettel rates Baku blunder as his low point of 2017

Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel has nominated his clash with Lewis Hamilton in Baku as his personal low point of the 2017 season.

Vettel banged wheels with Hamilton behind the safety car during the Azerbaijan. He felt that the Mercedes driver had been 'brake testing' him, although this was later disproved by the telemetry.

Vettel was penalised at the time. He finished in fourth place, ahead of Hamilton who had subsequently suffered from an unrelated loose head.

The 30-year-old initially refused to even acknowledge the incident had occurred. He eventually apologised several weeks later when the FIA asked him to explain his actions.

"The worst feeling I had was after Baku," Vettel said this week. "Just because I lost the race with something unnecessary. I struggled with that.

"You struggle generally in life a lot more with things that you messed up rather than those that got messed up for you, if you see what I mean."

As a result, Vettel put the incident ahead of the disappointments he suffered during F1's Asian leg. Two costly retirements in the autumn effectively handed the title to Hamilton, beginning with the three-way accident in Singapore.

"Singapore, in my point of view, that's racing. I thought about it a lot on Sunday night and it wasn't easy to put behind me. But then what do you do?

"The same in Japan," he continued, referring to a faulty spark plug putting him out of the race. It came to symbolise a difficult period for Ferrari in terms of technical reliability.

• Vettel hit by 'extreme pressure' in 2017 - Hamilton

"I think we all want to have the perfect result every single time," he acknowledged. "But there were races where we [the team] could have done better and races where I could have done better.

"There were also races where we should have done a lot worse and we didn't," he added. "Obviously some of the races get highlighted and you get a lot of praise for it. Other times you get a lot of the opposite. But that's part of the game.

Vettel had led the championship for the first half of the season, only to lose his grip and fall behind after the summer break.

"I don't know if it's the literal translation to English, but you can't hold onto something that is not in your hands," he said. "That's a good fit and sometimes things are not in your hands and you have to move forward."

Not that Vettel is spending much time regretting anything that happened in 2017 if it doesn't contribute productively to next year.

"I think the more important thing for us drivers, for us as a team, is to understand where we have been strong and where we have been weak."

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