Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel 'very happy' but bemoans Massa lap

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Sebastian Vettel says he is "very happy" with Ferrari's qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix but was annoyed not to beat Felipe Massa to third place.

Ferrari continued its strong form from pre-season by getting both cars in the top five in qualifying, having also looked quick during long runs on Friday. With Vettel and team-mate Kimi Raikkonen both within 0.1s of third-placed Massa, the four-time world champion admitted to a tinge of disappointment not to be lining up one place higher on the grid.

"If you look at the gap to P1, there is still a lot of work to do but for now we are very happy," Vettel said. "Obviously it is a big improvement from last year, the atmosphere in the team is very good, it is going in the right direction.

Obviously I would like to be one position higher but Felipe did a very good lap, so fair to him. We will see what we can do tomorrow but for sure it looks so far we are having a really good weekend.

"It is the first race of the season and maybe we could have done a bit of a better job, but the important thing is we learn and then we improve for the next time."

And Vettel says he is targeting a podium on Sunday having been encouraged that Ferrari is as competitive as expected.

"Coming out of winter testing, as far as you read the times, everyone more or less predicted Mercedes to be in front, which proved right, then it would be very close between ourselves, Williams and Red Bull.

"Speaking of ourselves, we are very happy where we are right now, we confirmed that is very close with Williams if you look at the gaps, so we will see what we can do in the race. What is most important is we keep having a good weekend without any problems and have a smooth race tomorrow and ideally get that one position back."

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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.