F1: Raikkonen pace hurts Vettel

Sebastian Vettel admitted that Kimi Raikkonen's lack of race day pace hampered his chances of securing a podium in the sixth round of the F1 season in Monaco. Vettel had started from ninth on the grid but having failed to set a time during Q3, the defending champion was able to go a different way on strategy compared to his rivals – starting on the soft tyres to run a long opening stint before switching to the supersofts for the run to the flag. The German had hoped that his decision to run a long first stint would give him the chance to build a lead while others dealt with traffic after their first stops, but Raikkonen backing up the field meant that most of the cars that had been ahead were able to rejoin in clean air rather than in the midfield. It meant Vettel had to settle for fourth at the finish, although he admitted it was still a good result considering his starting position. “It would have been nice to have been on the podium today,” he said. “I think the speed was there, but in the end we had the same strategy as the leaders, just the other way round. It was quite difficult as we were on older tyres, but we had some good laps and we gained roughly around eight seconds, so that was strong. After that I was in traffic and it's difficult to pass in Monaco, as I showed last year and Mark showed this year. “We were hoping some of the leaders would be forced to do two stops, but unfortunately Kimi made quite a big gap behind me, so the leaders had clean air after their first stop. That helped them and it made it more difficult for us, but we started ninth and considering it's hard to pass here, then to gain five places was a good day. “It's definitely good for Mark to win here and also for the team to get their third Monaco win in a row – it's impressive.”