Sebastian Vettel will start the Chinese GP from ninth place after being one of only two drivers to tackle Q3 on medium tyres – thus guaranteeing that he will be able to run a long first stint in the race.
Vettel aborted his lap after locking up but in any case was unlikely to have finished the session much higher than eighth, ahead of Jenson Button, who took the same decision.
“It’s a long race tomorrow, it’s a tough circuit on tyres, we know that,” said Vettel. “We learned a little bit yesterday. We decided to go opposite to the majority, whether that’s the right decision we’ll know tomorrow.
“We know the tyres are not great, and obviously that makes you think, and sometimes come up with a different approach.
The majority of cars were out on the soft tyre, which is the qualifying tyre, so even if we finished the lap we don’t have a fair chance to match them.”
Vettel said he didn’t think he had damaged the tyres when he locked up.
“There seemed to be very little load on the car. We need to find out why –I had quite a long pedal, so something broke. I think the lap was not really competitive anyways, so it didn’t matter too much.
“Probably the only other car on mediums was Jenson, and judging by his 2m lap time he wasn’t pushing very hard, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow. I checked the tyre, there was no damage, so it should be fine.”
Adam Cooper F1 