Recurring gearbox failures a concern for Vettel

Sebastian Vettel admitted that the current spate of gearbox failures on his Ferrari is definite a concern, and was not anything that they had experienced with the units in the past.

Vettel lost one gearbox at during Friday practice, but it was the failure of a brand new gearbox in FP3 that is of most concern - not least because it leaves Vettel with a five place grid penalty for tomorrow's British Grand Prix.

"It's a failure we've never had before, we've never seen," he said. "It was unique, something we haven't suffered before. Obviously it's something we have to understand because we had the same failure yesterday and this morning so we need to have a look."

Vettel didn't believe that the gearbox problems in Austria and now at Silverstone were related to issues they had experiences earlier in the season.

"I think the other occasions it was more a consequence of things happening, especially the first one - you crash, obviously it was a very mild crash, just a little crash in China and obviously you have to change it.

"You see other people crashing and they have to change it - they're not made for crashing if you see what I mean. But surely the issue we had today and yesterday is something new and we have to fix it.

"Obviously we've had I don't know how many races now and didn't have this kind of problem so we need to try and understand what's changed in the last couple of events and what's different here than around other places."

Even without the gearbox problems, qualifying was another disappointment for Ferrari with Vettel only managing to be sixth fastest in Q3. He'll start tomorrow's race from 11th after the gearbox penalty is applied.

"The car wasn't bad. Q3 was bad because I didn't get the laps in, other than that it was quite okay," he insisted. "I think better than we expected after practice where it was a bit difficult. Now obviously it was a shame that we couldn't show what the car could do.

"I was on a good lap, the first one, and obviously lost the rear in Stowe. I was able to catch it but the majority of lap time was lost. And then the second attempt I just went a little too deep and wide in turn 1 and it was difficult to recover from there.

"So, didn't have a good lap in qualifying when it mattered. I think the pace was actually okay and we were able to split the Red Bulls, but we didn't in the end so that's a shame."

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