Vettel insists he's not frustrated by Ferrari reliability issues
Sebastian Vettel insists that he is not frustrated by reliability problems at Ferrari, despite taking a grid penalty in Russia.
Vettel received a five-place gearbox penalty after the team feared that his previous unit was damaged in China. He qualified second on Saturday, and thus drops back from second to seventh. He also lost track time with mechanical issues in FP2 on Friday.
“I'm not frustrated at all,” he said. “Obviously it’s not nice if these things happen, because they don’t make your life easier, but equally it’s part of racing, these things can happen. They didn’t happen in purpose; they weren’t planned. But I think we are pushing very hard trying to catch up, which I think, especially in race pace, we’ve proven already this year.
“Obviously we didn’t have a properly clean race yet but maybe we’ll have one tomorrow, you never know, it’s a long race, a long way, especially around here, there’s a lot of things that can happen. So I think we have to wait and see, but you know, now it’s still April, tomorrow is May, it’s a long, long way to go, so it’s a long championship. At the moment I think it’s important to do your best to get the maximum points every single time and the rest you’ll find out anyway.”
Although Vettel was second fastest on Saturday, helped by problems for Lewis Hamilton, the margin to pole man Nico Rosberg was bigger than anticipated.
“Of course I would have liked the gap in the end to be a bit smaller. But yeah, I think in Q2 we saw that Nico in particular is very strong getting the lap in, so good job from his side. I think from us it was the maximum. Obviously we benefit from what happened to Lewis, which I’m not sure exactly what it was, but it allowed us to go P2, which helps for tomorrow with the penalty.
“We are a bit closer, starting on the clean side of the track. I think we can have a good race from there. It should be quite exciting. The car feels good and yeah, I think all weekend it had been quite strong. Obviously we lost some time but obviously we made it up this morning, as you touched on, so it shouldn’t be an issue.”
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