01/05/2016
NEWS STORY
In two short weeks Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat has gone from hero to zero. The Russian who stood his ground in the face of a barrage of accusations from Sebastian Vettel in Shanghai, seemed a million miles away from the hangdog we witnessed at the end of today's race.
Whilst China had been one of his best performances, Sochi - his home race - has to be among his very worst.
"There was a bit going on," he told reporters, referring to the opening couple of corners, "and I think in the last moment I didn't expect it to slow so much.
"I tried to press the brakes, the rear wheels locked and the first contact came from that. The second contact he (Vettel) just slowed down a lot, I couldn't see ahead, and I didn't have time to react.
"All the mess came from me," he sighed, "of course it doesn't feel great but these things happen sometimes. It's probably the messiest of my career. I will learn from it... and of course apologies to everyone involved.
"We will speak, that's all we can do," he continued, referring to his two victims. Everyone will attack me, but I'm okay with that."
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner did his very best to remain pragmatic, in addition to both his drivers failing to finish in the points, the Briton was visited on the pit-wall by Vettel.
"Obviously Seb was slightly frustrated," he admitted. "All I could do was apologise, because this week it was unfortunately a mistake from Dany.
"I think he knows what happened. He's misjudged the first corner, and hit Sebastian who hit Daniel. From a team point of view it's screwed our race because we could have scored a lot of points today.
"Emotions run high with all these guys, in his home race I think he just went for too much too soon. Unfortunately I think he has just misjudged it."
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