Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel fails to make it out of Q1 in Canada

Sebastian Vettel's Canadian Grand Prix hopes took a major blow when he dropped out in the first part of qualifying.

The four-time world champion - who is currently third in the standings - had previously started on the front two rows at every race this season. However, an electronics problem saw him fail to set a time early in Q1 in Montreal.

With Ferrari working to resolve the issue in the garage, Vettel eventually returned with enough time to complete two timed laps, using the supersoft tyre to aid his attempts to make it through. However, the problem had clearly not been solved as Vettel was unable to beat Fernando Alonso's McLaren and missed out on a spot in Q2 by 0.3s.

While Vettel ended the session 16th fastest, he will gain at least one place due to a grid penalty for Max Verstappen who drops 15 places from his final qualifying position.

Felipe Massa also dropped out alongside Vettel, while Jenson Button failed to run at all due to an ERS problem which stopped him on track in FP3.

Follow live coverage of qualifying here

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.