Vettel 'lucky' to finish Hungarian GP after Bottas crash

Sebastian Vettel admitted he was lucky to bring his Ferrari home in second after a late collision with Valtteri Bottas at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Vettel wiped a huge chunk of front wing off the Mercedes when overtaking him in the closing stages, but escaped without major damage to his own car.

At one stage in Sunday's race, Vettel looked like he had a chance to fight for the win from fourth on the grid, but he hit traffic on his lengthened opening stint on soft tyres and a slow pit-stop put him out behind Bottas in third, with Lewis Hamilton streaking clear to victory ahead.

As Bottas' tyres fell off late on, Vettel made his move around the outside at turn two, but it resulted in a heavy impact. Luckily for Vettel he continued ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen to limit the damage in the championship as much as possible.

"I was lucky I could catch the car [after the contact] and lucky I didn't get a puncture," he said.

"The team told me straight away that the tyres look fine. I had a feeling the car was fine and it was until the end."

Podium! #Seb5 #Kimi7 #HungarianGP #ForzaFerrari pic.twitter.com/ysJTaLuJA2 — Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) July 29, 2018

The stewards assessed the collision as a racing incident, and Vettel agreed, saying: "I felt, all of a sudden, I got hit from behind. For him [Bottas] there wasn't anywhere to go, I was ahead.

"I don't blame him - I think he had no grip and when you're so close it's very difficult to stop the car and I think he locked up and we made contact."

Vettel trails Hamilton by 24 points in the drivers' standings heading into the summer break, after spilling a maximum haul in Germany last time out.

"I think we started well with a car that wasn't yet ready. I think we had sometimes the pendulum swinging our way, sometimes not," Vettel summed up the first 12 races of 2018.

"From my point of view I think it's been fairly consistent. The one error [in Germany] that was very costly that was quite small, because I wasn't even trying but went off was last week. That's part of the game. I can't rewind the clock. It has happened.

"It obviously hurt us, but I'm quite confident that if we have the car to fight with, we can put them under pressure and make things happen in the second half."