Sebastian Vettel says he "didn’t deserve to be in the top three" in qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.
The German driver made it through to the top 10 shoot-out. He had just one lap to secure a spot on the grid but a mistake in the final sector meant the four-time champion could only manage fourth.
"I don’t think I deserved to be in the top three today," he admitted. "We saved tyres, so we start tomorrow on super-softs. I thought I could make it in the last lap, but my only run wasn’t special overall.
"I asked too much from my tyres already at the beginning and then I did a couple of small mistakes here and there, which cost me a lot of lap time.
"So in the end my run was not so good, but this is how it is and we can’t change it now. All in all, I think it has been a good weekend for us so far, and I think tomorrow it can be even better."
He will start just behind his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen. Commenting on his qualifying, the Finn said: "It’s more of a disappointment than anything else: today we had the chance of getting a better result.
"I don’t know if pole position could have been possible, but for sure we could have easily been second fastest. In the second last corner I ran wide and lost a lot of time. The position could have been much worse after that mistake, but we still have third place, which is not such a bad starting point for the race.
"It’s hard to predict what will happen tomorrow, it will depend on so many factors, the weather and the different tactics from the teams. In the race things are different: we’ll try to do our maximum, be the fastest and see where it brings."
