Ferrari has not slipped back in development - Vettel

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Sebastian Vettel is confident Ferrari has not slipped back in the development race compared to Mercedes despite its lack of pace in qualifying.

Having looked competitive throughout practice, Ferrari was over a second off the pace in qualifying and will start with both cars on row three behind Mercedes and Red Bull.

Asked if Mercedes has pulled away in terms of development as it had more obvious new parts this weekend, Vettel replied: “No I don’t think that quantity is over quality.

"I think we have a certain plan. Obviously we would have loved to have started a little closer to our competitors, to Mercedes at the beginning of the year.

"I think [in qualifying] we are further away than we have been all year, clearly we weren’t performing the way we should and there was something not right. I think the stuff that we brought here did what it was supposed to do so that’s good.”

And Vettel puts Saturday's struggles down to an overall problem with the Ferrari set-up rather than one specific weakness.

“I think I feel a lot more than you see on the television. It was not behaving similar to what we had during the rest of the weekend. It was worse and that explains why we lost performance but we don’t know why yet.

"It’s not a secret, it was sliding a lot but I don’t believe there was one corner we were losing, if you look at the sectors it’s pretty much all of the three sectors which would suggest just a lack of overall grip and when the grip is lower you slide more.”

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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.