Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel has spoken out since the chaos of the Belgian GP this weekend and said he believes officials are ‘lucky’ that Norris walked away from that Q3 crash.
The German driver told his team he believed that Q3 should not have gone ahead with the rain continuing to pelt down – shortly after which, Lando Norris lost control of his MCL35M and spun violently into the barriers at Eau Rouge.
Norris walked away from the crash with no injuries and said he had ‘some bruising’ but that he was ‘feeling good’ heading into the race.
When the red flag was summoned as a result of the incident, a furious Vettel shouted over the radio; “Yeah? Well what the f– did I say? What did I say!? Red flag! Unnecessary.”
Vettel, more recently, has said F1 now needs to do a better job and have plans in place to avoid future similar situations.
“I think Michael [Masi] is not proud of what happened either,” Vettel told Sky Sports.
“It’s always easy to play Captain Hindsight. I think we need to find a way that we listen more to the information that we have. Inside the garage, it’s very limited, it’s like looking out of a window. Three kilometres that way, I have no clue.
“When I went down to Eau Rouge and up the hill, it was a lot of water and was calling for a red flag. The truth is, the session should not have started at all.
“So I think the people that were standing on the Kemmel Striaght, they were in the rain and maybe we should have listened to those.”
He was then asked if he was ‘angry’ at Masi for not stopping the session, to which he responded; “Angry… I think it’s very difficult to [be]… it’s always easy afterward.
“But the main thing is that we learn from what happened. It could have been a different outcome with the crash. I think we were lucky that nothing bad happened.”
Vettel added that he felt a “massive” relief when Norris gave him the thumbs up, saying that he was OK after the crash, and said he felt there was nothing the young driver could have done to prevent the crash in the soaking conditions.
