Sebastian Vettel said he deserved more than ninth place on the grid after Ferrari’s latest strategic blunder left him a distance off pole-sitting title rival Lewis Hamilton at Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix.
Vettel clung to the notion that “anything can happen tomorrow” after Ferrari’s tyre gamble in Q3 backfired spectacularly.
Vettel and Raikkonen merged for Q3 fitted with intermediate tyres, but the track had dried after a brief shower and the pair scurried back to the pits for slicks, all the while Hamilton set his pole lap with a 1:27.760. Once the Ferraris were back on-track, the rain returned and errors at the slippery Spoon Curve cost them – particularly Vettel.
“I think the first run was sort of OK, Vettel said. – Obviously I had a mistake in Spoon so lost most of the time there. “But obviously the second run we didn’t make it out on time the because the rain came.
Obviously it’s not the position we deserved to be in. I think we have better speed than ninth but we start there and we’ll see how it goes. I think anything can happen tomorrow. Tomorrow’s a new day – obviously it’s not easy when you start further back but it’s not impossible.
It does not matter who makes the choice of the tyres, we made the choice all together. It was a wrong choice. But at that time making laps with the intermediates seemed a risk to be taken. Had the rain arrived before, we would have been the heroes. Then we saw it was the wrong choice.”
