Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel believes that a lack of grip in the rear of his Aston Martin may have caused him to be knocked out in Q1.

The German who finished FP2 eighth fastest was knocked one of the surprise early eliminations from Q1 after his final run was only good enough for 16th on the grid, his lowest starting position in Spain for fourteen years.

Later on, in the media pen, Vettel explained why the lack of grip in the car’s rear might have cost him a chance to progress into Q2.

“We had a good session up to Qualifying. In Quali I had lots of oversteer and struggled with balance and just couldn’t carry the speeds that I was planning to, so yeah, we’ll have a look, but it’s obviously a bit of a shame to start a little bit further back.

The lap was good, and there was nothing wrong with it was just very busy; I mean, obviously, I was sideways a lot and so on. I knew the lap time isn’t great, but I knew it was hot, and I saw after the first runs nobody is really smashing it in terms of lap times, so yeah, I was surprised because I expected to be better off today and somewhere around P10 but now were not.

“We knew that it’s not going to be a massive step in performance straight away, but we do believe in the concept, and we’re confident that there is more to come. It is different I am still figuring it out, but I thought I had a good feeling, and today in Quali, I was slowed down by, let’s say, the poor car balance in terms of struggling to get a trust in the rear of the car, it was moving too much, and I just can’t carry the speeds that I did in Practice.”

With a tough race ahead of him, Vettel will have plenty of work to do if he wants any chance of points in today’s race, but the German remains hopeful that by being clever, he can sneak into the top 10.

“Be clever I think with the tyres, we can (do) something different and hopefully have a strong race I don’t know; we’ll see how the strategy pans out, but I think we can still do well; it just becomes more difficult the further back you are.”