Sebastian Vettel hailed his Ferrari SF70-H as “phenomenal” after he claimed pole position at the Russian Grand Prix, his first since 2015.
Vettel edged team-mate Kimi Räikkönen by just 0.059s during qualifying at Sochi, as Ferrari secured its first front-row lockout in nine years.
Championship leader Vettel, victorious in Australia and Bahrain, expressed delight as Ferrari ended Mercedes’ 19-race pole position streak.
“A big thank you to the team, the car was phenomenal this afternoon,” he said.
“It was really a pleasure to take a seat and go around with low fuel and just try and push it to the limit, if you have a rhythm here it feels fantastic.
“It’s a great team result to have both cars on the front row, but it’s only part of the job, the main job is tomorrow.
“For now it’s an important step, we managed to improve a bit, maybe the circuit came our way a bit as well but it’s a very good result.”
Räikkönen went wide exiting the final corner on his final flying lap and believes pole position was within his reach.
“Obviously the aim is to be on the front, but the feeling has been a lot better this weekend, we just got some traffic on the out lap on the last set and couldn’t really make the tyres work as well as the first run,” he said.
“It was a bit more tricky, I just tried to get it back in the last corner but obviously it didn’t pay off.”
