Vettel 'struggling and sliding' on first day at Spa

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Sebastian Vettel denied that he was feeling frustrated during Friday's two free practice sessions at Spa, even though the Ferrari driver was frequently seen gesticulating at or heard complaining about drivers who got in his way.

"It’s traffic sometimes, sometimes people, including myself, could do better," Vettel responded when asked if he was being 'tetchy' on the first official day back from Formula One's summer holidays.

"I’m not entirely happy as you can see struggling a bit with the balance of the car. It didn’t feel great out there but that’s up to us, myself and the team, to work on that and improve the car."

Conditions were much hotter than teams have come to expect from Spa, but with the forecast set fair for the race there's still time for the drivers to adapt and find the right set-up in time for the Grand Prix.

"I hope we learn. I think the lap we had on the supersoft was OK, nothing special. A bit difficult to judge, Kimi didn’t have a clean run.

"I think we will be faster tomorrow [Saturday], we can improve the car. It’s quite tricky conditions though, for one lap it is. On a long run, the car was sliding around and struggling to make the tyres last.

"I think everyone was struggling to make the tyres last, I was sliding a lot. At least the cars I saw were struggling a lot, which is a bit of a shame but it’s the same for everyone. We will try and work on that.

Today was a tricky day, very slippery. It’s very hot. I don’t think it matters what tyres you have, it’s slippery for everyone. We’ll see, we have to improve our car. It’s not where we want to be.

"The competitiveness is difficult to say, I don’t think everyone had clear runs so it’s difficult to judge."

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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.