Sebastian Vettel concluded his penultimate race with Ferrari once again outside of the points, and a couple of slow pitstops by the Scuderia did nothing to improve the German driver's fortunes.
Save for a handful of laps in the first half of the Sakhir GP, Vette spent most of his evening among the bottom half of the field, between McLaren's Lando Norris and Alfa Romeo's Antonio Giovinazzi.
Pit stops - like many other things for the Italian outfit this season - haven't been Ferrari's strong point this year.
An agonizing 13-second tyre rotation at Imola last month proved costly for Vettel, and there was more unexceptional pit work on Sunday at Sakhir during both of the four-time world champion's tyre swaps.
But after the race Vettel exonerated his crew from doing a sub-optimal job, pointing the finger instead to the team's pit equipment.
"It’s tough enough for the guys, so I feel sorry for them," said Vettel. "[The equipment] probably needs an overhaul on the design because it’s not the guys’ fault."
Slow pitstops notwithstanding, Vettel said his evening under Bahrain's floodlights had been "really difficult", suspecting that a down-on-power replacement engine bolted on after FP3 had weighed on his performance.
©Ferrari
"My race was a bit irrelevant," Vettel said. "We were quite slow from the start.
"I couldn’t go with the people ahead and be in the mix, I was not really gaining anything on the straights, even with the tow and DRS.
"I felt like I was a bit down on power, I don’t know if the engine change yesterday had an impact on that.
"So I was just on the defense the whole race and couldn’t benefit with the soft tyres at the end. So obviously the pit stops didn’t make a huge difference."
There was however a silver lining for Vettel on Sunday: the outstanding performance of Racing Point, his future team, and Sergio Perez.
"For sure [Racing Point are] strong, and I’m looking forward to it," he said.
"But for now, I’m willing to finish this chapter, even if it seems quite painful. But I tried what I could today and it was really difficult."
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