Sebastian Vettel: “We are not where we want to be…”

Sebastian Vettel has qualified sixth for the second consecutive race after taking a gamble that might pay off on Sunday.

Thanks to a penalty for Kimi Raikkonen Vettel moves up to fifth, and he will start the Malaysian GP on the hard tyres after choosing to use them for the crucial final runs. In theory he should be able to run a longer first stint which may play out as a useful strategic advantage. He also has a new set of mediums tucked away.

Vettel made the call because he was unlikely to qualify very much higher with the medium tyre, on which he was struggling.

“It didn’t feel very good on the soft tyre and I decided to go different,” said Vettel. “I went on the hards, and I think it was a step forward. I didn’t feel that happy in qualifying, I was struggling to find the balance. I didn’t get everything out of the car for one flying lap.

“There’s not much strategy behind it, to be honest. I was struggling on the soft tyres, I thought I had a better car on the hard tyres, that’s why I made the choice. I could have gone a tenth, maybe a tenth and a half quicker on the soft tyre. Whether it’s an advantage for tomorrow I don’t know, but as we are the only ones we hope, but let’s see.

“It’s fairly easy to see, we are not there where we want to be in qualifying. There’s a lot of work ahead of us.”

Vettel said he wasn’t surprised to have as hard a time as he did in Australia.

“What do you expect will happen within one week? We had a not so good qualifying in Australia and a not so good qualifying here. We had a good race in Australia, so we’re looking forward to the race. Our race pace should be better, but nevertheless there’s plenty of work to do and we are aware, so we need to push hard.”