Vettel says he was 'trying too hard' in FP2

Sebastian Vettel was comfortably faster than anyone else in second free practice for the Italian Grand Prix, but he still wasn't feeling as though he had really got the best out his Ferrari on Friday.

"I am not entirely happy yet, but I know we can still improve because our car has big potential," he said.

"The balance of the car is not perfect yet. But I believe we can work on it for tomorrow as the car seems to be working well," he added. "We can do better tomorrow as the package is good, so we’ll see. We’ll keep doing our homework”.

The day hadn't got off to the best start, after Vettel lost time in FP1 with a gearbox issue.

"This morning we had a little problem with the car; I wanted to run, but we had to check the gearbox first," he said after completing just four laps before lunch.

• Vettel fastest in Monza FP2 after early Ericsson red flag

As it turned out, heavy rain in the morning meant that his enforced lay-off hardly proved much of a setback. In the afternoon he quickly bounced back and finished top of the timing screens with a lap of 1:21.105s.

However just moments after completing that effort, he went off at the Parabolica. "I was trying a bit too hard," he admitted.

"The small problem was more my side, I lost some track time," he explained. "Equally it’s good to find out [where the limit is] ... I tried and I know what doesn’t work, and it’s good to know."

Although his spinning car was slowed up as it traversed the wet gravel run-off, the rear wing of his car did end up making light contact with the barrier.

"I thought I managed it without touching, but I had just a slight touch," he said. "I had just one slight nudge and came away with minor damage to the rear wing which had to be replaced. Apart from that, the car was fine."

Fortunately Vettel had been able to get the Ferrari out of the gravel trap and back on the track without the need for a red flag, allowing him to continue with his session once repairs had been made.

"At least I got out of the sandpit, which was difficult as a child!" he quipped. "But nowadays I don't want to spend much time there ... The most important was that we could still carry on and still gather some data."

His team mate Kimi Raikkonen was second fastest in the session, but over two tenths off the top time.

"Obviously we did not do much mileage today," said the Finn. "I think that in the end we were quite lucky to have at least one session in the dry.

"We obviously had some things to fine tune today, but it was not too bad for the first laps," he noted. "Now we need to go through things and try to improve a bit for tomorrow."

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