Sebastian Vettel wishes he raced in different F1 era after paying penalty

Sebastian Vettel launched a passionate explanation of his love of “racing” after the disappointment of his Canadian GP penalty, admitting he would have preferred to have been in a different era.

In a calmer and more measured reaction to the dramatic events of Sunday’s race, the Ferrari driver expressed his dissatisfaction with certain aspects of modern F1 compared to the past.

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“I was just thinking that I really love my racing. I’m a purist, I love going back and looking at the old times, the old cars, the old drivers,” Vettel said in the post-race press conference.

“It’s an honour when you have the chance to meet them and talk to them; they’re heroes in a way. So I really love that but I just wish I was maybe as good, doing what I do, but being in their time rather than today.”

Vettel insisted his remarks were not simply a response to his race-losing penalty, elaborating on wider complaints, but believes his incident with Lewis Hamilton was ultimately “just racing”.

“Just hear the wording when people come on the radio, that we have now. We have an official language, I think it’s all wrong,” he added.

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“I think we should be able to say what we think but we’re not so in this regard I disagree with where the sport is now.

“You have all this wording ‘I gained an advantage, I didn’t gain an advantage, I avoided a collision’. I just think it’s wrong, you know, it’s not really what we’re doing in the car. It’s racing, it’s common sense.

“If there’s a hazard on track, obviously you slow down because it’s quite unnatural to keep the pedal to the floor and run into the car and then say, ‘ah, it’s wrong that the car was there.’ I think Lewis… obviously as I said, I rejoined the track and then Lewis obviously had to react. I don’t know how close it was or close he was.

“Once I looked in the mirror he was sort of there but for me that’s racing and I think a lot of the people that I just mentioned earlier, the old Formula 1 drivers and people in the grandstands and so on, would agree that this is just part of racing but nowadays it’s just… I don’t like it, we all sound a bit like lawyers and using the official language. I think it just gives no edge to people and no edge to the sport. Ultimately it’s not the sport that I fell in love with when I was watching.”

The decision to penalise Vettel was met with widespread dismay and sadness by former drivers, including Sky F1’s pundits, while the crowd in Montreal expressed their displeasure after the race.

“I wouldn’t be happy sitting in the grandstands seeing that for 70 laps there was a fight on and then you blow the fight by a decision like that,” added Vettel on Sunday night.

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(c) Sky News 2019: Sebastian Vettel wishes he raced in different F1 era after paying penalty