From the very start of Sunday afternoon's Japanese Grand Prix, Sebastian Vettel was robbed of any chance to fight for victory and close the gap to Lewis Hamilton in the fight for the 2016 World Drivers title when a spark plug on one cylinder failed on his way to the grid.
Mechanics worked feverishly on the car as it sat on the grid, just as they had done with teammate Kimi Raikkonen's car a week earlier in Malaysia, and thought they had fixed the issue before the drivers were sent off on their installation lap.
Seb got off the line well, but not well enough to take the lead, but the problem was still there and he lost one place on the opening lap.
The Safety Car came out after Sainz crashed and Sebastian was sixth and losing ground so the team called him into the pits where mechanics tried to fix the problem. However, a few minutes later a dejected Seb climbed out of the cockpit, his day over.
A spark plug was broken and it was pointless to even attempt to go on, even though he wanted toโฆ
โI don't know if this situation has much to do with reliability. But we didn't finish the race, so there is a problem,โ he said. โI think it was a small issue causing a big one. We didn't have power already at the start and we tried to reset everything getting the power back, but something didn't work.โ
โOf course now the Championship is more difficult and not finishing the race doesn't help. I also said to the guys to get back home and have some rest because it's been a tough week with a lot of changes.โ
โThen we'll come back with a better package to do well for the last four races and then we'll see. Overall, I believe the team is in a good way. We are improving race by race and there are positive aspects too. But, of course, today you can't look too much at positive things.โ
Sebastian is now 59 points behind Lewis Hamilton with just 4 races remaining. Sebastian will have to finish 5th or higher if Hamilton wins in Austin to keep his championship hopes alive.
