Vettel keen to move on from 'scrappy' day

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Sebastian Vettel described Ferrari's day of practice on Thursday as "scrappy" after twice hitting the wall in Monaco.

The four-time champion was competitive in FP1 but dropped off the pace in FP2, finishing the session ninth fastest. Vettel spun at Mirabeau and hit the barrier with his rear wing before later clipping the wall at St Devote and he admits he struggled to get comfortable on the street circuit.

“We tried something in the afternoon, maybe it wasn’t as good as expected," Vettel said. "I didn’t get the rhythm, I didn’t get good laps in on the ultrasoft. In that regard it was not a positive day. Then it got scrappy, I touched the wall, damaged the rear wing, was lucky we could fix it and carry on. Not a clean day.

"Today we didn’t have a good day, both of us. I don’t know exactly what happened to Kimi but I think it’s fair to say that being just inside the top ten is not where we belong if the car is working well.”

After a poor run on Thursday, Vettel is already looking ahead to trying to recover in FP3 ahead of qualifying on Saturday.

“Tomorrow we don’t do anything but Saturday is when it matters. You know that qualifying is very important round here and I think if we do well on Saturday then nobody cares what happened today. That’s Monaco.

"Surely today is very important, yes we could have done a better job, I could have done a better job, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Most important is that you keep looking forward and there’s a lot of stuff that we learn equally today so we need to make sure that we do the right steps for Saturday.”

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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.