Ferrari has to make do

Reliability is clearly Ferrari’s Achilles’ heel at the moment. Not a single weekend has passed this year without a red car being stopped by its mechanics. Russia is no exception, with a five-place grid penalty caused by a gearbox change.

The question was therefore to know from which position Vettel could start. Lewis Hamilton’s new breakdown naturally earned him a place. But in pure performance, he was still seven-tenths behind Nico Rosberg at the end of Q3. If this is the second-best performance of the session, he will start in 7th position. He knows he will have to push to move up: “I will start 7th, which is not at our level. We should therefore be faster than the other cars around us. The car is good. So I’m confident for tomorrow. We are not the favorites, but there is always a chance. I hope it goes well this time.”

Kimi Räikkönen is also having a difficult weekend, with a stability issue on his car: « The whole weekend has been complicated: for some reason, I’ve always struggled to do a decent full lap. In qualifying, it was a bit better but I was fighting with my front end in a few places. »

The mishap happened again at the worst possible time, in the last corner of his final lap in Q3: “It could have been good enough for second or third on the grid but in my last corner, I completely missed the last turn and slid. Obviously, it’s disappointing that it happened but, given how difficult it has been, this result isn’t ideal but still better than nothing.”

The start promises to be tense as Kimi Räikkönen has often been in contact with his compatriot, Valtteri Bottas, who will start on the front row.