Sebastian Vettel says he is “not frustrated at all” by Ferrari’s recent run of reliability issues and thinks he can have “a good race” in Sunday’s Russian Grand Prix from P7.
The German clocked the second fastest time in Q3 around Sochi Autodrom but will drop five places on the grid for taking a new gearbox. The news came on Friday night after Vettel already had to sit out most of FP2 due to a loss of electronics on his SF16-H.
Having retired with an engine failure on the formation lap in Bahrain, the four-time world champion was asked in the post-qualifying presser whether he was getting irritated by the situation.
“I am not frustrated at all” Vettel replied. “Obviously, this is not nice when these things happen because they don’t make your life easier but equally this is part of racing. These things can happen, they did not happen on purpose. The were not planned but we are pushing very hard to try and catch up.
“We’ve already proved our race pace this year - of course we have not had a properly clean race yet but maybe we’ll have tomorrow you never know. It’s a long race, especially around here where many things can happen. We have to wait and see.”
Vettel’s penalty was slightly mitigated by Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton suffering an ERS problem in the final part of qualifying, with the lead Ferrari comfortably seeing off competition from Williams’ Valtteri Bottas to qualify P2 behind Nico Rosberg.
“Of course, I’d like the gap in the end to be a bit smaller,” said Vettel, who finished 0.7s off the pole sitter. “But we already saw at the end of Q2 that Nico was really strong getting the lap in so a good job from his side.
“We are benefitting from what happened to Lewis... It allowed us to be P2, which helps with the penalty. We’re a bit closer starting on the clean side of the grid. I think we can have a good race from there and it should be quite exciting. The car feels good. All weekend has been quite strong.”
Vettel’s 42-point gap to Rosberg in the championship could well increase given their respective starting positions for Sunday’s race, but the Ferrari man is ready to play the long game in this year's record 21-race season.
“It’s still April, tomorrow is May. There is a long long way to go, it’s a long championship. At the moment, it’s important to do your best and get the maximum points every single time.”
REPORT: Rosberg takes pole as ERS problem hits Hamilton
AS IT HAPPENED: Russian Grand Prix - Qualifying
Romain Grosjean column: Haas brought back down to earth
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