Sebastian Vettel finds Hockenheim crash funny

Sebastian Vettel

Vettel finds Hockenheim crash funny

Was it his low point of 2018?

Matthew Scott

Friday 12 July 2019 15:34 Updated: 18:17

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Sebastian Vettel says he has learned to laugh at the crash at last year's German Grand Prix which came to characterise his defeat to Lewis Hamilton in the title race.

Vettel skidded into the gravel from the lead of his home race, with Hamilton taking the win, having started 14th on the grid.

The German had entered the race with the championship lead, having beaten Hamilton at his own home race at Silverstone, but the Mercedes star would not relinquish P1 for the remainder of the season.

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Vettel was clearly emotional in the moment of the incident, but says his view has since softened and he is able to appreciate his own efforts across the whole weekend.

"Overall I am more looking forward than looking back," Vettel told BBC Sport. "So it is not that I am occupied by what happened last year.

"It's not that I will go to Hockenheim [in 2019] thinking: 'Oh, this is where I binned it last year.' I can laugh at myself and I can laugh about that, and I make a lot of jokes about that as well."

He added: "It did hurt. A lot. Because it was such a perfect weekend, you know? With the pole on Saturday. But just the atmosphere. You rarely have these weekends and still if I look back it is one of the best weekends I ever experienced.

"Now, you can say horrible because I parked in the gravel and not in the parc fermé, but still, from an atmosphere point of view, the whole thing, it just was missing that final bit.

"So it did hurt. But I wasn't stuck there for long. It was my mistake. But it was a relatively small mistake with huge costs. I have had huge mistakes in races with small costs.

"But, for me, that's racing. As beautiful as it can get, it can also be cruel sometimes."