Sebastian Vettel says Red Bull should be relatively pleased after Sunday's Australian Grand Prix yielded a podium finish, but the reigning World Champion admits that he was left wanting more after starting the 58-lap race from pole position.
The German lost his lead during the second phase of pit-stops, with Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and race-winner Kimi Räikkönen ultimately proving too strong.
"We have to be happy today," Vettel explained after the race. "We have good points; we wanted more but there’s no reason to be disappointed. It was good fun, tricky with the tyres, but I'm happy to be on the podium. Unfortunately it didn’t quite go as we hoped, but it’s a long season and you have to admit sometimes that other people are faster."
Vettel’s pre-race fears of intense tyre degradation were realised, with the 25-year-old being forced to pit before his main rivals after his Super Soft rubber 'fell apart'.
"We had a good start and first two or three laps but then the tyres fell apart," Vettel explained, before adding, "we couldn't go as long as other people. I knew Fernando passed us at the (second) stop, but I didn't know where the other car [Räikkönen’s Lotus] had come from. I never saw him so it was a little bit of a surprise."
In the second Red Bull, Mark Webber endured a much tougher day, getting off to a terrible start from his second-place grid slot and losing the use of KERS early on.
"We had a few issues on the grid, getting the telemetry from the car to the pits, which wasn’t ideal in terms of the guys knowing where to set everything up for the start," said Webber, who recovered to take the chequered flag in sixth place. "We lost KERS also for the first part of the race. It looked like we were quite heavy on the first set of tyres and we weren’t that quick to challenge for the win as a team today.
"We salvaged something, but that was Melbourne today and it was disappointing not to get more out of it. It was hard to fight against others on a two-stop."
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  K. Raikkonen | Lotus | 1:30:03.225 |
| 2. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | +12.451 |
| 3. | S. Vettel | Red Bull | +22.346 |
| 4. | F. Massa | Ferrari | +33.577 |
| 5. | L. Hamilton | Mercedes | +45.561 |
| 6. | M. Webber | Red Bull | +46.800 |
| 7. | A. Sutil | Force India | +1:05.068 |
| 8. | P. di Resta | Force India | +1:08.449 |
| 9. | J. Button | McLaren | +1:21.630 |
| 10. | R. Grosjean | Lotus | +1:22.759 |
| Full results | |||
| Mark Webber | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| More Mark Webber photos | |||
| Sebastian Vettel | |||
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| More Sebastian Vettel photos | |||
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