Vettel does not blame Ferrari after a rare worry in Qualifying
Sebastian Vettel's ambitions collapsed along with one of his suspensions today in Singapore. However, the driver is not dissociating himself from his team. The Italian team was disappointing overall, with Kimi Räikkönen finishing a modest 5th.
Vettel’s troubles in 2016 continue:
Q1: 22nd -> 1:49.116 (4 Laps)
The German could only qualify last among the 22 drivers participating in Singapore, due to a rare suspension issue encountered on his car in Q1.
In her misfortune, her strategy had pushed her onto the track among the last; the little time remaining in the session after discovering the incident prevented her from completing a lap time that would have at least taken her to Q2.
« Part of my rear suspension broke on my out lap » Vettel explained.
I’ve quickly felt that my anti-roll bar had broken, it was like being on three wheels, which isn’t really effective! I then tried to get back to the pits on the next lap, but the team realized they didn’t have enough time to fix the issue. It’s a rare failure. Fortunately, it didn’t happen on Kimi’s car. It’s really unfortunate because I think our car was good enough to reach the front row!
For the first time in Singapore, Vettel will start in the second half of the grid. An irony, given that his worst starting position in the city-state was from 6th place: « I felt better during the night sessions than in the afternoon ones, which gave me great confidence for qualifying. »
What a difference between the current situation on Saturday compared to last year when the four-time world champion secured a great pole position! Furthermore, the situation is also made more complicated by the strong pace of the Mercedes.
The gap is large, probably larger than we expected. But the gap between Mercedes and Red Bull is also more significant than I thought. They could have put both cars on the front row, but Daniel did a very good job.
For the race, his prospects will therefore be much more limited, but this two-hour long race always holds many surprises: « We will have a long race ahead of us, with certainly many safety cars. At least we have extra new tires! We can always hope for a good race. »
After all, Vettel had reached the podium in his last start from the back of the grid, in Abu Dhabi in 2012, while driving the Red Bull…
A lack of grip costing Räikkönen precious tenths:
Q3: 5th -> 1:43.540 (12 Laps)
As the only representative of the Scuderia’s chances, “Iceman” could do no better than 5th under the checkered flag of Q3. Worse still, while holding third place after the first run, 0.9 seconds behind Nico Rosberg’s top performance; he inexorably slipped to that position, overtaken by the two Red Bulls at the last moment:
The car behaved decently, except for a general lack of grip. There wasn’t much to improve on to go faster, apart from indeed that issue.
The Finn had nevertheless opted for an aggressive strategy, also being the last to start on the track at the decisive moment. But obviously, the plan fell through:
« I had a good first lap, I wanted to try to push a bit more but it didn’t pay off. If we get a good start, anything can happen. It will be a long race, we will also need a bit of luck. »
Satisfied with his long stints during Free Practice, Räikkönen still has a good chance of finishing on the podium, just like last year, where he secured third place, behind Vettel and Ricciardo, but ahead of Nico Rosberg.
