The car was good, but the rhythm was missing - Vettel

Following a troublesome qualifying session, Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel has revealed that his car was „okay”, but he has failed to find the rhythm after missing the majority of the Friday practices.

The quadruple world champion’s weekend did not get off well after he was forced to sit out the first practice session on Friday due to issues with the intercooler system on his SF1000. The team managed to get on top of those problems in the afternoon session, but Vettel’s work was then affected by problems with the brake pedal of his car.

After missing the majority of the Friday session, the German started his preparation in FP3, but the limited mileage meant that he was unable to find the rhythm around the 5.8 km long Silverstone where it is very important for the drivers to have confidence around the blindingly fast corners.

„Yesterday wasn’t great, but this morning was fine. In the qualifying, the car was okay. I struggle to extract the maximum. Around here, it is important to find the rhythm, but it looks like I haven’t found it yet,” Vettel started his assessment.

„I have struggled the whole weekend to get into the rhythm. The qualifying was a bit up and down, the car was quite okay. I struggled to make it work for myself.”

The Friday long runs indicated that the medium and hard compound could become the preferred race tyres with the soft compound showing a high degradation just after a couple of laps. Vettel could get through to Q3, but only on the fast-degrading soft compound which puts him into a vulnerable position compared to drivers who are free to select their tyres which they intend to start the race on.

„It is not ideal for myself, I struggled really to make the car work. It has not been a good session, we made it to Q3, but on the wrong tyre and then we did not make enough progress in Q3. We have to start with the soft which is not good news, but we try to make it work.”

Despite posting the fifth best time in the first sector and the eighth best time in the middle part of the track, the German was unable to put a perfect lap together.

„Come qualifying, everything was fine, so it should have been a better day, I struggled a little bit to put the laps together. I am not happy, but let’s see what we get tomorrow. The race is long, so let’s see how everyone is managing the tyres, It is not the best position to start from, but nothing is lost,” the German concluded.