It was another difficult day at the office for Sebastian Vettel as he could only qualify a lowly P15 for tomorrow’s race.  

In an interview with Sky Germany, the German admitted that teammates Charles Leclerc is on another level to him at the present time.  

“It’s not just beating, it's like a different class. I try everything I can. I think the laps I hit, and I'm satisfied with them, are still too slow. At the moment there is nothing more I can do than to get what I have inside me.” 

Vettel tried to follow his teammate into Q3 on the medium tyres as he used two sets in Q2, a decision made by the German himself. However, he ended up finishing last in the session and over half a second adrift of his stablemate. 

He believed he could get through to the final segment of qualifying on the yellow marked tyres, but he couldn’t get heat in the tyres on his final attempt.  

“I actually had a pretty good feeling after the first try (of Q2),” he said. “But in the second run, the tyres didn't get up to temperature at all. I locked a wheel right at Turn 3 and then the lap was already messed up.” 

“I don't know why I have such a hard time getting the tyres up to temperature, and that it feels a bit different every time. As I said, the car felt good the first time I tried it. 

“I thought that with the medium I could easily repeat the time of Q1. That was the target, but it wasn't that easy.” 

Charles Leclerc produced another superb qualifying performance for the second straight event as he hauled the SF1000 to P4 on the grid; he ended up less than half a second off the pole time of Lewis Hamilton. 

Along with the Mercedes’, he made it through Q2 on the medium tyres with a fine effort. Leclerc was ‘’very happy’’ with his Saturday afternoon. 

“I am very happy with my lap and I think we managed to get everything out of the car today. Congratulations to the whole team for the great job they have done, both in Maranello and here at the track. The latest updates we introduced here have also added a bit of performance to our car and the last few qualifying sessions show we are heading in the right direction. 

‘’Already yesterday, I had a good feeling about Saturday, while there are still various things we need to look at before the race. But I am very happy to have got through Q2 on the medium tyre, because I’m sure it's the ideal tyre for the start of the race. In Germany we suffered on the soft tyres in the low temperatures, while here it’s not as cold and we have the mediums. I need to get a good start and if I manage that, I can be in the fight for a strong result.” 

Starting from the 2nd row tomorrow. We extracted the maximum out of the car. Will try to do the same tomorrow in the race! pic.twitter.com/r934A2UhHc

— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) October 24, 2020

What a lap @Charles_Leclerc 👊❤️ Bravo. P4. #PortugueseGP🇵🇹 #essereFerrari🔴 pic.twitter.com/3Vma9X7jDC

— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) October 24, 2020