Vettel: Ferrari 'no threat' to Ricciardo in Monaco qualifying

40

Sebastian Vettel admitted that Ferrari had no chance of stopping Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo from claiming pole position for the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix.

"Well done to Daniel, he owned the qualifying session," said Vettel after the chequered flag. "I don't think there was a threat to Daniel's time today."

Vettel did manage to pip his title rival Lewis Hamilton to second place with his last run in Q3. But he was still 0.229s off the pole time.

“I was pretty happy with the last shot I had,” he insisted. “Maybe there was half a tenth but not enough to put Daniel under threat.

"For today no doubt that it was the best man on the day. He deserves the pole.

"We knew what was going to happen this weekend," he added. "It was expected that Red Bull would be quick here.

"They looked strong on Thursday. They looked strong this morning. We got as close as we could now we'll see what we can do for tomorrow.

"They have a strong car, they have more downforce than everybody else. At this track we knew they would be strong.

Brilliant Ricciardo claims Monaco pole with unbeatable record pace

"There's always a feeling that there's a little bit [more in hand]," he continued. "We were playing around with the set-up trying to squeeze everything out.

"We knew we had to if we wanted to have a front row or pole. We put ourselves in a good position," he said. "It still doesn't feel great, but it's just one race.

"The thing is for us that we have potential in the car," Vettel added. "That's what it's about."

Vettel's team mate Kimi Raikkonen will start right behind him from the second row of the grid. But the Finn expressed doubts about the new pink hypersoft tyres he will be starting the race on.

“We struggled a bit with the tyres straight away going into Turn 1," he said. "I wasn’t 100 per cent sure of how it was going to be [at the start of the race.]

"In this kind of place you need to know what exactly is going to happen so you can push," he pointed out.

"Obviously we are not 100 per cent happy with how it was. We know we are not happy as we should be."

Raikkonen added that his race strategy had to be to take advantage of any opportunities that came his way on Sunday.

"It’s possible to plan for tomorrow and see if we have any issues, and then do the right thing whenever it comes."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.