[emcon5]

Originally Posted by Zeke

And Webber didn't like the way he won the race. RB didn't have a transmission problem all season that I can remember. How are we skeptics supposed to find on this one? If Vettle was lying in the interview then he's just a tool.

From the post race press conference:

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Livio Oricchio - O Estado de Sao Paulo) Mark and Sebastian: we also heard that Sebastian had gear problems and suddenly, very hard gear problems. Then we started following your lap times. We should expect you to lose time in sector two maybe, when you used the low gears which your mechanics suggested you use. But you didn’t lose time there and you could maintain the pace with Mark and you also finished very close to him. We had the impression at some times, I’m sorry to say, that it might not be true.

SV: I can tell you that I had a gearbox problem and I was forced to… I didn’t like the message but I had no choice. Either you finish the race or you don’t. As I said, I turned down the engine, I felt happy in the car and I felt more and more able to understand the tyres after the first stint and keep the pace reasonably well, so I tried to stay as close as I could with Mark and then push where I was allowed to which was in the corners, not so much as soon as I started feeling the throttle, because I was forced to use high gears and upshift earlier. At the beginning, I think I was able to keep reasonably close, especially in the second sector. Of course, I lost - not traction - but then acceleration but then the straights are relatively short in the second sector. But then if you compare the last sector, for instance, which has only one corner, and then it’s killing uphill when you have to upshift early. At some stage I got the message ‘we need to save the gearbox and slow down’ but I told them that I’m aware and I wasn’t pushing hard. Yeah, I think we had good pace in the car and we were quite quick on the soft tyres at the end. Obviously it was more about getting the car to the chequered flag, but you can believe me, if I had the choice, I would have gone for the racing option.

MW: Well, I didn’t drive Seb’s car. All I can do is what I can do. When I first got past Seb, obviously, I realised that the race was not over for him, but I thought, OK, I’m maybe managing the race with the other guys, because problems normally only get worse. So my rhythm wasn’t only judging myself against Seb at that point. If I pushed, obviously, most of the time it was half a second per lap or four tenths, and then some laps it would the same, mainly because I was not completely disciplined myself because I knew I could give the tyre a bit of a chance to breathe a bit more and make the stints a bit longer, and keep the gap at whatever it was. Some laps I could push, obviously, and give the tyres a bit more of a chance when I had less fuel and stuff like that. I’ve agreed with you many times this year, but not this time.

JB: Viewing this from the outside, I can say whatever I wanted, but as a driver you learn to adapt to a situation. If you’re told to save fuel, if you’re told to save brakes, you learn to adapt and you drive in a different manner. Many times this year we’ve saved fuel and you can pretty much match a lap time after five or six laps, because you adapt to it and you drive in a different way. That’s what we’re paid to do.