Vettel admits to being ‘too aggressive’

Sebastian Vettel says he was “a little bit too aggressive” on his out lap on day three of the second test, causing him to spin in his Ferrari.

On his first lap early on Saturday morning, Vettel brought out the red flags with his SF15-T facing the wrong way in the gravel on the approach to Turn 5. Vettel explained he had been testing track conditions and made a mistake exiting Turn 4, before helping the team try to get the car ready to return to the track.

“I probably was not yet awake!” Vettel said. “It was very crisp this morning, quite cold, I wanted to see how cold it was and went a little bit too aggressive and simply spun. It was my mistake, so then it’s the absolute minimum to try and help the team as much as I can taking some of the gravel out of the car.”

Vettel recovered to complete more than 100 laps as Ferrari’s reliability improved from Friday, and he says the team has a strong baseline car.

“Really you have to keep your feet on the ground and remember there is a lot of things that have changed. The base looks OK, it looks good to build on. Obviously I was not here last year so I can not judge last year’s car but I think people including Kimi [Raikkonen] and myself - so the drivers as well - are fairly happy with the initial car behaviour and we go from there. Mercedes are the ones to beat, those are the facts.”

Full times and day three as it happened.