Vettel content with front row, as Raikkonen rues errors

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Sebastian Vettel said that he was "reasonably happy" to be starting from second place in Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix.

The Ferrari didn't have the pace to match Lewis Hamilton's record-setting pace in qualifying. The second Mercedes driven by Valtteri Bottas also edged Vettel in the final round of the session.

However Bottas has to serve a fine-place grid penalty for the race after taking an new gearbox on Friday. That promotes Vettel back into the shotgun position for the Grand Prix, and the four-time champion is happy with that prospect.

"Qualifying seemed quite good to be honest. I'm reasonably happy," he said after the end of the session.

"I tried everything on the last run," he admitted. "I knew I had to take a bit more risk but it didn't work and I ran out of track at the exit of the Esses.

"But I knew that even if Valtteri could get past, I would still be on the front row," he pointed out.

"I would've liked to have been a bit quicker, but it's quite amazing with the new cars around here."

Hamilton storms to pole for the Japanese Grand Prix

Vettel's team mate Kimi Raikkonen was sixth fastest in qualifying. However, like Bottas he faces a five place grid drop after damaging his gearbox in an accident on Saturday morning.

The team had been hard at work rebuilding Raikkonen's car right up until the moment the track went green at the start of the session.

"For sure the team did a great job [rebuilding the car]," he told Sky Sports F1. "But you pay a price for mistakes, and I made a mistake today and we had to change the gearbox.

"Obviously it was far from ideal to prepare for qualifying, especially after yesterday's little running in the dry.

"[The car] felt okay. But obviously when I had to really push I made a mistake in the first run in the last qualifying, and then a really average lap time on the second.

"But you know, it's a bit tricky after the mistake that I did and obviously not really knowing where we should be," he sighed. "It's a consequence of missing or crashing in the wrong moment of the weekend."

Starting from outside the top ten leaves Raikkonen a big task for Sunday. Despite Ferrari's impressive speed, Suzuka is not an easy track to overtake on at the best of times.

"Obviously not ideal starting position," Raikkonen admitted. "But I think we should have a good car so we'll see what happens."

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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.