Sebastian Vettel has admitted that despite improving on his last lap, Ferrari were not a threat in qualifying in Abu Dhabi.
The Scuderia were looking for their first pole position at Yas Marina in the turbo-hybrid era, but they had to settle for a second row lockout on Saturday afternoon.
Vettel qualified ahead of out-going team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, in his last pole shootout for the Maranello outfit before his move to Sauber for 2019. Despite not making the front row, the four-time World Champion admitted that he still enjoyed his afternoon’s work.
“I enjoyed the session. I improved but not enough to be a threat,” Vettel admitted. “No surprise by Mercedes pace. They looked very competitive all weekend. Qualifying was a bit up and down.We tried everything and gave it everything we have.
“It’s a long lap so there’s a lot of lap time to be found if everything works out. “I was happy in our session and happy. Would have liked to get in the front row but it’s not the case,” the four-time Champ continued.
I said to the guys tomorrow we will fight as hard as we can, anything can happen.”
“It was a solid qualifying session and I think there was nothing wrong with the car today, nothing to complain about,” Raikkonen said.
In fact, it worked pretty well, we were only lacking a bit of speed especially in Sector 3; that’s where we were losing the most and it has been like that for all the weekend.
Our competitors were probably playing around a bit in the first part of the session, then in the end the margin was bigger.”
VETTEL: “I enjoyed the session. The first run in Q3 was very close. For tomorrow, I’m quite confident – it’s a long race. It should be good fun. I’m looking forward to challenging these guys” #AbuDhabiGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/sl15sCogHK
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 24, 2018
