All in all, it was a perfect example of damage limitation.

Having effectively ended Valtteri Bottas' race at the first corner, and certainly ended any hope of a Mercedes 1-2, Sebastian Vettel was still able to climb his way back to fifth at the finish, while the Finn finished a distant seventh.

Like the stewards, most drivers were in no doubt as to the cause of the incident, even if they disagreed with the leniency of the subsequent penalty meted out to the German, however, Vettel, though accepting blame, insists there was little he could do.

“My start was too good,” he said. “Then I ended up with nowhere to go.

“It was my mistake," he added, "I tried to brake early and get out of it, but I had no room and no grip, being so close to the car in front and also next to me. Valtteri tried to get his position back, which is fair enough, but then I had nowhere to go... the turn goes left.

“I tried to slow down but with that little grip, I could only open the radius and that meant I had to unfortunately make contact to Valtteri," he sighed.

At the subsequent team debrief, expanded on the incident.

"Obviously, what you don't see is that I lost a lot of grip and as I said I saw it and I was aware, so the two cars running around the outside trying to get their position on me, because I was stuck but I couldn't slow down more than I did and obviously lost the car and hit Valtteri.

"So I guess the rule is causing a collision and that's what I did because I lost the car," he admitted. "But was it intentional… certainly not, because it could as well have been the end of the race for me.

"Obviously for Valtteri it was very bad because it affected his race and he had nothing to do with it, so I went to him after the race. Given the situation, how tight it was, I think we were both lucky in a way to be able to continue. From there, obviously we had a good recovery but it wasn't the race we wanted."

Asked why he couldn't have done more to avoid the incident, he added: "The way I look at it with hindsight, I would have liked to have a worse start, because then it would have been more straightforward and I wouldn't be in that position.

"I haven't seen it yet so I will look at it again, but from the inside it didn't feel - or didn't appear - that there was a lot I could have done differently. I tried to get out of it. Obviously you don't hit the brakes 200 metres before the corner just because you think it could be a bad spot to be in, you still try to be competitive.

"But to be honest, I wasn't attacking first, I was aware that Valtteri, and even I saw Max, would have a run around the outside because I'm stuck. But obviously it wasn't enough but it's just one of those things that sometimes goes wrong."

Check out our Sunday gallery from Paul Ricard, here.