Sebastian Vettel says there was little he could do to avoid a Q1 exit in his first qualifying with the Aston Martin Formula 1 team, heaving encountered two separate instances of yellow flags on his decisive laps.
> UPDATE: Vettel summoned to stewards’ hearing on Sunday
With track evolution during the session proving significant, Vettel had to make his last lap count to progress into the second segment of qualifying.
However, as cars queued up to begin their final laps, he only just made it over the line before the chequered flag flew, and then had his lap compromised by two incidents.
First, the Haas of Nikita Mazepin had spun at Turn 1, marking his second spin of the session, and then the engine on the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz – Vettel’s replacement at the Scuderia – cut out midway through the lap.
It meant Vettel had to observe double-waved yellows through Turn 8, and he was left 18th in qualifying, ahead only of the Haas duo.
“I did the best I could to keep pushing,” Vettel told the team on the radio, to which his engineer replied: “Yeah, copy.”
Team principal Otmar Szafnauer estimated that Vettel had lost “over four tenths” due to the yellow flags – and he was 0.403s off making Q2 in the end.
“It’s a long season, we’ve got a lot of running to do yet,” Szafnauer said. “We’ve got a race to run tomorrow – he’ll be okay, he’s still buoyant about the race tomorrow.”
Speaking to media after the session, Vettel said: “It was a mess in the last sector, warming up, I just made it across the flag by less than a second and then I had two yellow flags. Not much you can do at that stage.
“I wasn’t very happy in practice, I was feeling at least a little happier in quali, but obviously I didn’t get a lap in.”
Vettel’s team-mate Lance Stroll made it through both in Q1 and Q2 – aided by some ill-advised medium-tyre gambles from teams seemingly above Aston Martin in the current pecking order – and ended up 10th in qualifying.
“We have some work to do,” said Stroll after the session. “We’re quite a bit off McLaren and some of our competitors.
“AlphaTauri looks quick, we have to work hard and catch them. Tomorrow is a long race but look like they have some pace advantage at the moment.”
He added that the car appears only marginally capable of reaching Q3 as he did on Saturday. This appeared to be backed up by Stroll doing a 1m30.6s lap in both Q2 and Q3.
“Well I mean last year we were high up Q3 and fighting for top positions, top five, six positions,” he said.
“This year, it’s more of a very good lap to get into Q3.
“Not so good lap: knocked out.
“We have to work hard, the others did a very good job over the winter.”
Asked by The Race on his opinion of where the fundamental limitation in the car lay during the weekend so far, Vettel added: “We are not where we want to be.
“And on top of that, I think I’m still learning, we’re still learning, trying a lot of things to understand the car further. I think obviously it’s a tough weekend now, starting so far back, but it is what it is and we go from there.
“Like I said, it felt a lot better, it’s difficult to say. It’s obviously also very close. So, we’ll see.”
