Sebastian Vettel admits it was his own fault that he did not qualify any higher than sixth, behind Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen, in qualifying for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
The German made errors on both of his laps in Q3 which was further compounded by news earlier in the day that he would drop five places on the grid due to a gearbox change.
Vettel will start 11th in Sunday’s race and the former Red Bull driver believes he could have split the Red Bull duo of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo had he not made those two mistakes.
“For sure I was on a good lap on the first one, the first attempt [in Q3] and then obviously I lost the rear in Stowe. I was able to catch it but the majority of the lap time was lost,” he said.
“Then on the second approach I started similar to the first, but I just went in a little too deep and wide in Turn 1 and then it was difficult to recover from there. So, I didn’t have good laps in qualifying when it mattered. I think the pace was actually okay and we were able to split the Red Bulls, but we didn’t in the end. That’s a shame.”
Despite suffering another gearbox failure in final practice, Vettel believes it will not be a concern for Ferrari in Sunday’s race.
“I think we took some precautions coming into qualifying and we didn’t have the failure in qualifying. We didn’t see the failure on Kimi’s car [either]. I am fairly confident it will be fine tomorrow but we did get caught out twice with the same problem.”
“Yeah, we didn’t have it before [coming here], so it might be something related to the track,” he added.
