Vettel was hoping to 'extract a bit more' from Monaco race

Sebastian Vettel was happy not to leave Monaco empty handed after claiming a championship point in the Principality, but the Aston Martin driver was hoping that the race's imponderables would help him deliver a better result.

Vettel qualified ninth and finished just outside the top ten on the road in Sunday's chaotic race which was partly impacted by a mistake on lap 6 that saw him go straight at Ste Devote and lose a spot to Alpine's Esteban Ocon.

But a five-second penalty handed to the same Ocon for clashing with Lewis Hamilton elevated Vettel to tenth in the final standings.

"Basically, we don’t go back empty handed, so I guess it was a decent recovery," said the German.

"We had some issues at the beginning of the race, I had an excursion on the first corner, really struggling on the extreme wets and after that we tried to do what we can and happy to score a point in the end, but I was hoping that we can maybe extract a bit more."

Despite the race's treacherous conditions, Vettel said he enjoyed a fairly straightforward afternoon.

"Today was a race in which anything could happen, but actually it was quite a clean and straightforward race for me.

"We managed to pick up a point, which was a good effort because it is always difficult to make progress at Monaco, especially with only one dry line.

"We learned more about the car, too, optimising the set-up with the new parts we introduced recently. All these steps are taking us in a good direction for the races to come."

• Read also: F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2022 Monaco GP

On the other side of Aston's garage, Lance Stroll was left to ponder a scrappy race, marked by an early pitstop and a thump with the barriers at Massenet.

But despite his difficulties, the Canadian believed there were some positive to take away from his weekend on the French Riviera.

"I knew it would be a struggle to score points when starting so far back and it was always going to be a tricky race in the wet weather, but there are positives to take," said Stroll.

"We made the right call by switching to the Intermediate tyres early on because it was clearly the best compound.

"On the whole, the race gave us plenty of opportunities to continue learning about the car’s recent developments.

"I am confident we will be able to develop the car for both the slower and faster circuits in the near future."

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