Vettel happy with 6th in qualifying
Red Bull Racing had a difficult qualifying session, and the team more or less expected it to be like this. Sebastian Vettel was actually happy to be able to qualify in 6th position for the race. Mark Webber on the other hand is 11th and right where he thought he would end up.
Sebastian Vettel, Position: 6th, (3rd Practice – P12, 1:25.406):
“I’m pretty happy with the result; my last lap should have been a bit quicker, but whether it would have made a difference or not is hard to say. If you look from us to the front, the gaps are too big. All weekend we were not quick enough, so P6 is a very good place to be. Let’s see what we can do in the race, I think the pace tomorrow should be better.”
Mark Webber, Position: 11th, (3rd Practice – P11, 1:25.389):
“It’s pretty much what we expected today. Seb and I were on the bubble there; it was very close between us – there’s only a tenth here and there and I’m out. No massive surprises. I’m eleventh, so we can have a bit of a choice on what we can do tonight, but I’d rather be further up the grid. We’ve got a bit of a slog tomorrow; but it’s Monza so never say never.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal:
“It was a difficult qualifying for us today; we knew going in to this session that it was going to be tough. We made it through Q1 without any pressure after Hulkenberg stopped early on. Unfortunately Mark missed the cut at the end of Q2 by the smallest of margins. Sebastian delivered a very good lap in Q3, to line up in sixth, which will become fifth for the starting grid tomorrow (due to Di Resta’s penalty). Hopefully our race pace will be stronger than we’ve shown today and we can take the fight to the cars ahead of us. It’s a fairly unique track”.
Cyril Dumont, Renault engine support:
“Again this weekend we would like to be a bit further ahead on the grid but we haven’t succeeded to do that. I would like to apologise to Sebastian, as we had an issue in FP3 during his last run. We had an alternator failure, which meant he wasn’t able to do a run on the option tyres. We have to investigate exactly where the issue is coming from, as this was a later spec of alternator compared to when we had this issue in Valencia. We have to analyse all the data to understand. Looking at our pace in FP2, it’s encouraging for the race tomorrow.”
