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Sebastian Vettel reckons Fernando Alonso was a tad too aggressive with him in their enthralling final lap tussle at the Japanese GP on Sunday. Alonso was closing on the Aston Martin towards the end race, as he was on fresher intermediate tyres.
On the last lap, Alonso approached Vettel at the rate of around three seconds per lap. What followed was a thrilling battle at the chicane, with Vettel coming out in front by a mere.011 secs.
Talking about his tussle with Alonso, Vettel said that he had lost his radio during the race, so he did not know if he was on the last lap while also noting that Alonso was a 'bit' aggressive. He said:
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"Well, it was very, very close. He was a bit aggressive, I would say. But yeah, there was a bit of a confusion because I lost radio, and I looked at the pit board, and I think race direction changed their mind of how long the race is going to go, and I didn't know. I think we got away with it."
Vettel and Alonso also came together at the start of the race, which saw the German dropping all the way down to 16th on the grid. Talking to Motorsport.com, the retiring Vettel said:
"We did touch. I went to the left because he had a poor start, and I had a good start. Then I got a lot of wheel slip and some aquaplaning and sort of lost the car, and then touched and lost the car entirely. But then we had a great recovery in the end."
Vettel made a quick switch to intermediates, which helped him gain a lot of places on the restart. The German said that it was pre-planned, saying:
"Yeah, we spoke about it before. The team worked something out. And I obviously made the call judging the conditions, but it worked really well."
"We dragged the car up to where it probably doesn't belong" - Sebastian Vettel
Sebastion Vettel finished the race in P7, finishing just ahead of Fernando Alonso in a photo finish. The German was quite pleased with his performance and was happy to beat the faster Alpine, saying:
"We dragged the car up to where (it) probably doesn't belong. Even splitting the Alpines, which are a lot faster than us, But we managed to hang in there, so I really enjoyed the weekend. And I love everything about this place."
Vettel now has four races to go before he retires from the sport at the end of the season.
