Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel admits a ‘costly mistake’ severely impacted his final lap which resulted in him qualifying ninth.
Mercedes dominated qualifying and many expected Ferrari to be their nearest challengers but in the end, Williams’ Valtteri Bottas was best of the rest.
In what was a poor day for Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen suffered an issue in Q2 which forced him to stop out on circuit.
Vettel admitted to Autosport the final lap of Q3 was ‘the worst lap’ and he lost a lot of top at the bus stop chicane.
“The last race doesn’t matter now, but it’s always disappointing [to finish so far down in qualifying] when you consider I had a good feeling throughout,” Vettel said
“Probably the worst lap, or the worst part [of qualifying] for us was the last one.
“We only had one set of [soft] tyres due to the red flag earlier [caused by team-mate Kimi Raikkonen’s failure in Q2], but still, I was fine until the last corner where I lost too much time.
“I went in a bit too deep, had a very poor exit and lost quite a lot of time, two-tenths, not enough to go P3, but enough to be higher than P9.
“It was a costly mistake and I’m not happy with myself because it was very tight from P3 onwards. We were at the right end of it in Q2, but at the wrong end in Q3.”
The Ferrari driver is confident of making progress through the field as he feels he is quicker than some of the cars ahead.
