Sebastian Vettel attacked too much in Q3 at Sakhir

Sebastian Vettel was able to set the fastest time in the first two practice sessions on Friday. But when it came to the moment of truth, the Ferrari driver once again had to bow to Mercedes. For the first time this year, he is even outpaced by both Silver Arrows drivers. The gap is almost half a second, which hasn’t been the case since the beginning of the year.

But the German acknowledges that his car is not solely to blame, as he himself was unable to complete a perfect last lap because he tried to overcompensate for the gap between him and the pole position time: « In qualifying, after seeing the gap at the end of my first lap in Q3, I was not satisfied. So I tried to give it my all and maybe pushed too hard. It’s a circuit where it’s easy to overdo it. Today, we lost time almost everywhere on the lap, maybe more than usual on the straight. »

Sebastian Vettel therefore hopes to be able to use his race pace to move up in the hierarchy. The same will be true for his teammate, Kimi Räikkönen. He had to settle for the 5th fastest time, which may not improve his standing with Sergio Marchionne, the president of Ferrari, who did not hesitate to criticize him after the Chinese Grand Prix.

The Finn, however, believes he had the potential to do better: The car was behaving well. I thought there was a lot of potential but for many small reasons, we never managed to get the right time. The final result is far from what we wanted. I struggled to find the right setup: in the end, it was better than in the last races but, in qualifying, when we started to push, we didn’t achieve what we wanted.

The objective will therefore be to at least get ahead of the two Red Bulls and get involved in the battle with the Mercedes to prevent them from pulling away in the championship.