Sebastian Vettel said he was given a “painful” reminder on how close the 2014 Formula 1 grid is, during qualifying for the Italian GP. The defending four-time world champion was only 8th during the qualifying hour for Sunday’s race.
After appearing to be a lot closer to leaders Mercedes during Friday practice, it did not come together for Red Bull with Vettel 8th and Daniel Ricciardo 9th. Ricciardo has won the last two races.
Vettel was 1.327s slower than pole man Lewis Hamilton and will start alongside Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso on the grid.
“I think it was a tight session, around here we knew it would be very tight,” he is quoted as saying by ESPNF1.
“It’s painful when you are at the back of this pack of cars who all did more or less the same lap times. That’s how it is sometimes, equally in Spa where I was probably in front and then at the back but that’s how it goes.
“I think the speed is there to move up but for sure you have to say the two Williams and two Mercedes are too quick for us, not just in qualifying but in race pace. Wheras Ferrari and McLaren are about the same [as Red Bull].”
Despite the low grid spot, at the track where he took his maiden pole and win in F1, Vettel is still optimistic ahead of Red Bull’s chances for a strong race. During the long runs during Friday’s second practice session, the defending champions were close to Mercedes on overall pace and believe that this is a positive sign that they may be able to challenge a lot higher up the field than their grid positions suggest.
“Our race pace should be better than today so P8 with hindsight I think was the best we could do. P6 we could have done with more of a tow down the straight, which you need around Monza. I think for tomorrow we should be able to move forward,” he said.
“It will be difficult to come up with a completely different strategy because everyone will do the same thing. It’s about keeping your head cool and doing all the small steps, getting everything right. Then we will have a good chance to move forward. We hope for a good start and a good first lap and we will go from there.
“We seem to be quite consistent in terms of tyre useage and so on, maybe that helps us be fast consistently rather than for just one lap. Equally that hurts over one lap to extract the maximum from the tyres.”
