Vettel "felt a bit down" after seeing gap to Mercedes

Sebastian Vettel admits that he was surprised by the gap between Ferrari and Mercedes after qualifying, as the German was almost half a second down from the time of pole sitter Valtteri Bottas.

Ferrari has so far been on the pace of the Silver Arrows but appear nowhere near them after today's session. He also thought he had produced a clean lap, but then saw how far away he was. 

"Overall I was very happy with how qualifying went, with how the car felt," he said. "We had some issues yesterday, there was nothing wrong but we tweaked the balance for today in the right direction, and we were happy with how it turned out to be.

"In Q2 I thought 'okay this will be tight', I was happy to go into Q3, was happy with my first lap, I crossed the line and looked up [at the big screen] and saw both of them ahead. When I got the time obviously I was a bit down to be honest, four tenths was a lot more than I expected, also given how good the lap felt."

The four-time world champion pushed hard on his last lap as he felt he had nothing to lose, but failed to improve his time meaning that he will start from the second row alongside Daniel Ricciardo for tomorrow's Grand Prix.

"On the next run I tried a bit hard everywhere but equally I had nothing to lose as I was quite safe also to cars behind," he said. "I tried harder but it didn't work, I went slightly slower, obviously if I went a tenth quicker it would not be enough, so I tried a bit more but hopefully we can do a bit more tomorrow."

Fergal Walsh