Vettel reckons early mistake cost him higher F1 finish in French GP

While running long on the hard tyre in the first stint of the race, Vettel ran wide at the long sweeping right-hand Le Beausset corner, costing him around three seconds.

The German still managed to continue his streak of top ten finishes, running just behind the trio of Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso.

Vettel finished just under two seconds behind Alonso in the battle for eighth, leaving the four-time champion thinking without his mistake he could have finished higher. 

“Good recovery drive to have both cars in the points, not a lot of points ninth and tenth, but better than none,” Vettel said. “We had to try something different and I think it worked.

“Unfortunately I had one off in the first stint here I went off and lost a lot of time otherwise I think maybe we could have been closer with the group at the end with better tyres and score more points but you can feel it is quite windy and the car was inconsistent so it was difficult to judge and I was pushing quite hard and maybe that lap took a bit too much.”

After a difficult start to the season where Vettel failed to score in the opening four rounds, he has enjoyed an impressive resurgence.

Explaining his upturn in form, Vettel added: “Yeah, I think the first races were not really going out direction, now it seems a bit calmer. I’m quite happy in the car, it’s doing what I’d like it to do.

“I think the team in general is strong. Obviously we are not where we want to be with the car but I  think overall the team is doing very well, we have been catching up a bit, which is important, we are in the mix, it is very tight, and we scored points, we are fighting with AlphaTauri and Alpine, it’s going to be a long year, hopefully we are getting better and better and starting to have a bit of an edge but it’s a long way.”