Sebastian Vettel: “Obviously it hurts…”

Sebastian Vettel failed to make it out of Q2 in Belgium despite reporting no particular problems with the car or his quick lap.

Vettel qualified 11th, but has been moved up a place by a gearbox penalty for team mate Mark Webber. However he does have a free choice of tyres for the start and has more new sets available after not running in the final session.

“I think nothing went wrong, as in I didn’t do a mistake and there was no real problem with the car,” said Vettel. “Obviously it hurts. We lost out by a little bit to get to Q3. If you have another run then maybe it’s another story. At the time I was pretty happy with the lap I had. The time didn’t come.

“Obviously tomorrow is a long race. At this track it’s definitely possible to overtake, so I think we were in a worse position on Saturday afternoon after the qualifying in Monaco, when I think we were ninth only. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow. The good news is there are no points today. We’ll try to have a good race. I think the pace in the race is fine, this morning seemed quite good.”

When asked by this writer how his preparations had been affected by the Friday washout, he didn’t use it as an excuse: “No problem. I think it was the same for everyone. This morning I was pretty happy to be honest, and this afternoon it was just… not coming towards us. The lap time was there I think, but it just didn’t come. As I said I was happy with my lap, and it’s not as if I had a big mistake or anything.

“I’m 11th, Pastor Maldonado was in 10th [in Q2], only one hundredth quicker, and then he went nine-tenths quicker in Q3. For me I don’t think it was possible to go nine-tenths quicker.”

Meanwhile Vettel was fined 10,000 euros by the FIA for doing a practice start in the pits. Drivers are not allowed to do ‘hot’ starts and head down the pit lane to the exit – if they do one, they have to stop after a few metres and be pulled back to the pit box by the mechanics, which is standard practice.

“It was my mistake. We obviously practised a pit stop and you’re not supposed to leave your box and I left the box. I was probably trying to practise the pit stop a bit too hard.”