Sebastian Vettel says he decided not to take any risk when he suddenly lost drive in FP2 for the Bahrain Grand Prix, as reliability remains a concern for Ferrari.
The German ground to a halt in the closing stages of the night session and immediately inspected the back of his stranded SF16-H looking for the origin of the problem. Vettel then confirmed to his team that the issue appears to come from a loose wheel nut on the rear left.
With team-mate Kimi Raikkonen suffering a turbo failure in Australia and the threat of taking an engine grid penalty potentially looming, the four-time world champion explained did not want to take any chance.
“We don’t know 100% [what the problem was],” Vettel said. “I felt out of turn four that I lost drive so I decided to stop. Obviously we don’t want to risk or damage the car, which is a shame because I wanted to do a couple of more laps but that is what it is.
“I think it is normal when you feel something is wrong. You try not to take risk, it is incredible important to do the mileage and get the information on Friday but it is also important to make sure the car is in a good condition for the whole weekend and whole season.
“Nowadays it is important to make sure you don’t risk anything, the engine, the car as much as possible.”
Having only set the 11th fastest time in FP1, Vettel looked much closer to the Mercedes on the soft compound early in the second session. However, a scruffy flying lap on the supersoft tyre meant the 28-year-old could not improve his FP2 mark and finished only sixth and more than 1.6s off Nico Rosberg’s table-topping time.
“I think if you want to qualify as high as possible you have to use the super-soft,” Vettel added. “I don’t think that is a secret. A lot of people did their homework today, I haven’t done everything I could because we stopped. Kimi [Raikkonen] did a lot of laps, so this is still a reasonable day
“I think we could be a bit closer here. It is difficult to say, I don’t know what Mercedes did today. They will be the ones to beat so we will push hard. A lot of homework today for us but I think we can improve.”
REPORT: Rosberg heads Hamilton and Button in FP2
AS IT HAPPENED: Bahrain Grand Prix FP2
Romain Grosjean's exclusive F1i column - Bahrain
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