Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel blames self for spin in FP2

Sebastian Vettel says he was pushing too hard during Friday practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix as he failed to set a medium tyre lap time due to a spin.

With running having been completed on the hard compound tyre during the first half of FP2, Vettel then spun at Turn 11 on his medium tyre run. The incident limited him to the seventh quickest time in the afternoon session while team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was second and Vettel says he was overconfident on the option tyre.

“We had the hard this morning so we had the medium this afternoon,” Vettel said. “I didn’t finish my lap … I pushed a little bit too hard. We are here to try, I tried and it went a little bit wrong.

“The spin was nothing to do with bad luck, it’s to do with me pushing a little bit too much thinking I could make it stick and I couldn’t. So I guess if you choose a day you choose today.

“I think it’s difficult to say where we are compared to Mercedes, they didn’t have a clean day. That’s not the most important thing now, that’s to look after ourselves.”

Asked about potential competition come Sunday, Vettel says he expects Ferrari will need to be wary of a number of teams.

“We’ll see. I think it will be close between us and Williams. Probably Red Bull as well and the Toro Rossos. It’s difficult to say, it’s a mixed bag. But at the front Mercedes is strong.”

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Malaysian Grand Prix

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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.