Sebastian Vettel has experienced poor results in the qualifying for the first time since he joined Ferrari in terms of performance as he left Q2 with a slow car.

 

The 4 times World Champion eliminated in Q2 in Austria as he was still targeting points on Sunday, but the red car will start only from P11. 

 

Charles Leclerc himself faced a slow performance as he qualified P7 in Q3, nearly over one second slower than Valtteri Bottas who topped the session and second slower than his pole time last year. Anyway, the performance led Vettel to confess that, despite the team having played down their chances ahead of the weekend, he’d nonetheless been shocked by their lack of pace.

 

“Surprised,” he said after his Q2 exit.

“I thought that we had a little bit more in hand but it looks like the others were probably running a little bit more fuel or more conservative in practice.

 

"I didn't feel so confident with the car towards the end of the session, but the race is tomorrow and that’s the part of the weekend we look forward to the most. So, we will see what we can learn from today to improve for tomorrow. Our car was not quick enough and the balance was not ideal. I think we were losing a bit on the straights with too much drag, but in some corners, we are very competitive.  

 

"For sure we would have liked to be faster, but P11 puts us in a good spot for the race, with a free tire choice allowing us to do something different with the strategy, which could be important as it is meant to be much hotter tomorrow. It’s not ideal and I am not fully happy and we clearly did not have as much in hand as the others, but our race pace should be more competitive."

In any case, Vettel kept in a deep silence after the team radio informing him his poor result today, Ferrari simply lacked the pace to challenge any of the top 4 today. Let's see how tomorrow goes!