Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari eager to understand ‘strong’ test crash

Sebastian Vettel says Ferrari is working “flat out” to understand the cause of the failure that pitched him into a “strong” impact with the barriers during testing.

Vettel’s SF90 suffered a yet-to-be-identified mechanical failure through Turn 3 during Wednesday morning’s test session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, sending him into the wall.

Vettel was unhurt in the impact but the front-left of the SF90 sustained substantial damage, while barrier repairs caused running to be halted for half an hour.

Charles Leclerc is set to take over running this afternoon but is not expected to appear early on while Ferrari undertakes repairs and an evaluation.

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“Obviously inside the car, I was going into Turn 3 and I had a feeling there was an issue with the front-left corner and then from there it wasn’t anything that I could have done to avoid the impact,” he said.

“After that, I wasn’t in control anymore and went straight into the barriers.

“We are flat out trying to understand, it would be a lot easier if there was a lot of run-off and the car didn’t hit anything because now due to the hit it’s fairly damaged.

“We have to be very careful in understanding exactly what is the problem. That is what everyone is looking at here at the track and also in Maranello. It’s important to us.

“I hit the wall quite strongly and I think the Tec Pro and the wall did their job and the car did its job but of course after the impact, the car was very damaged.

“That’s what also makes it quite difficult to reconstruct what was going on before the impact.”

Vettel’s earlier time nonetheless left him second on the morning leaderboard, a second behind McLaren’s Carlos Sainz Jr.