Tag Archives: Ferrari

Sebastian Vettel says that Ferrari has to get to the bottom of its gearbox issues after he picked up his third five-place grid penalty of the season at Silverstone, resulting in him dropping form sixth to 11^th on the grid.

The German was most concerned about the fact that he had the same failure on Friday and in FP3 this morning.

“It’s difficult to remember all of them!,” said Vettel. “One was a consequence of what happened in China, the second one I don’t remember, and this one here obviously was after the failure this morning. It was something new we haven’t suffered before [Silverstone]. Obviously we need to understand, because we had the same failure yesterday and this morning.

“I think the problems that we had yesterday and today, that’s a weakness, and we need to stop it. Obviously I think the other occasions it was more a consequence of other things happening, especially the first one – if you crash, obviously it was a mild crash, but still a little crash in China, and we had to change it. You see other people crashing and they have to change it. They are not made for crashing, if you see what I mean. Surely the issue that we had yesterday and today was something new, and we need to fix it.”

Vettel said the fact that the problem did not occur for a third time in qualifying gave him some confidence heading into the race.

“I think we took some precaution going into qualifying. We didn’t have the failure in qualifying, we didn’t see the failure on Kimi’s car, so I’m fairly confident that we will be fine tomorrow. But surely we got caught out twice with the same problem. We didn’t have it before, so it might be something related to the track here. It happened also at the same place, at the end of the lap onto the main straight, so we need to have a look and really understand what happened.

“Rest assured that we are looking into that. It’s a very high priority, obviously it cost us five positions today, and if it happens again it will do the same again. It’s something we need to fix. Plus if it happens in the race, you don’t finish.”

Vettel admitted that he had not had a great qualifying session, and felt he should have been a couple of spots higher than sixth he earned before his penalty.

“I was on a good lap the first attempt, and then obviously lost the rear in Stowe. I was able to catch it, but the majority of lap time was lost. And then the second approach I started similar to before but just went in a little bit too deep and wide in Turn One, and then it was difficult to recover from there. I didn’t have good laps at the end of qualifying when it mattered. I think the pace was actually OK, we were able to split the Red Bulls, but we didn’t in the end, so that’s a shame.”

Vettel said he had no problem with the track limits rules imposed this weekend.

“We spoke about it yesterday, everybody was there, so we all agreed on it. That’s it. So it’s OK. I don’t personally care if we can go out or not, it just has to be clear, and it was made clear yesterday.”

Sebastian Vettel says he had a “decent” first day in Austria, despite finishing the afternoon session in a gravel trap after a spectacular spin.

Vettel was third fastest in FP1 and fourth in FP2, with his time in the morning session standing as third fastest overall for the day.

He faces a five-place grid penalty, thanks to a gearbox change but he believes he still has a shot at winning on Sunday.

“Always, I think every race is an opportunity,” he said. “I think it was a decent day, I’m not entirely clear where we are, we didn’t have much running, in the afternoon in particular. But overall, we should be OK.

Regarding the spin he said: “We had an issue with the brake distribution [balance]. It caught me by surprise. It didn’t matter too much, we lost a couple of minutes, it didn’t make a big difference.”

Vettel says there’s no point fretting about his grid penalty.

“It is what it is. It’s obviously never great if you get plus five. Now we know, so we don’t need to worry any more.”

Meanwhile he didn’t join the chorus of complaints about the revised kerbs, which was led by Max Verstappen: “Maybe they need to build stronger front wings and they would stop complaining! I don’t know, I haven’t been on them, I haven’t experienced how harsh they are.”

Sebastian Vettel professed himself pleased with qualifying third in Canada despite just missing out on beating the Mercedes drivers.

Against expectations Vettel was only a tenth of a second off the Mercedes pace when it mattered in Q3.

“I think going into qualifying I thought it was possible,” he said. “As a driver you always feel that there’s a little bit more. I think on my last lap I was very happy with the lap in general, I was maybe a bit greedy out of ten and maybe not greedy enough into turn six, but there wasn’t an awful lot to grab otherwise, as I said, very happy.

“I wanted to get below the 1m13s mark because then I knew it would be very close with the Mercedes. I did that but just by one hundredth so a little bit was missing, but overall I think we have a great car, we did a step, so I’m happy with how the weekend has turned out. We did a step or so overnight so I felt in general very comfortable and enjoyed qualifying a lot. I brushed the Wall of Champions so done that, don’t have to do that tomorrow, so we should be all set.”

Regarding Ferrari’s turbo upgrade for this race he said: “I think we expected to bring performance to the car and that’s what it did. I think this is probably a track where it’s quite important. There are a lot of straights so yeah, I think that’s why we decided to bring it here as well and as I said, it worked and it should help us also tomorrow, not just today.”

Sebastian Vettel’s chances of taking on Mercedes in Sochi have been dealt a blow after he has been forced to take a new gearbox and thus a five-place grid penalty.

Ferrari thought that there might be problems after the collision with Kimi Raikkonen in China, and ran the gearbox today to check it out. The data confirmed that a change was necessary for Saturday.

Meanwhile Vettel was forced to pull off and park on the pit straight in FP2 today after he was hit by an electrical issue that prevented him from running for the balance of the session while the crew worked on the car.

“It looks like we had an electronic problem,” said Vettel after the session. “It’s a bit of a shame because we’re lacking a couple of laps, especially in the long runs and race trim, to see how competitive we are. I think that Kimi did homework for the team, so not too bad. Also I think here we know roughly what to expect. I think we can still learn a lot from what other people did.”

Regarding the Italian team’s prospects for the weekend he said: “Difficult to say. The balance isn’t yet where I wanted it to be, but I think we can improve. Naturally I think the circuit should come our way. It was quite slippery this morning, I spun the first two laps. I didn’t spin this afternoon, that’s already a massive improvement!

“I felt happier as the day continued. Obviously we did some stuff for qualifying. For the race we’re lacking a bit information, but it shouldn’t be too bad. So let’s see tomorrow morning, we still have another practice session.”