Sebastian Vettel has hinted that there is probably an issue with his car after he struggled to finish inside the top ten at the British Grand Prix, whilst team-mate Charles Leclerc scored a podium finish.
The Ferrari driver qualified a lowly tenth and failed to gain a single position in the opening laps of the race, in fact he fell back to as low as 13th at one point before recovering slightly to 11th, where he spent much of the grand prix, battling the likes of Antonio Giovinazzi and Pierre Gasly.
Thanks to punctures for both Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz, Vettel scraped a single point whilst Leclerc took third.
Vettel didn’t look comfortable at any stage during the race and although he wouldn’t go as far as labelling it one of his worst weekends, he did describe it as “very poor”, but is insistent his SF1000 is carrying an issue.
“The result was very poor. The car was very difficult to drive, I struggled to find my confidence, but I don’t know why. We need to have a good look, but, certainly, if I struggle for so many laps in the race, from the beginning to the end there’s probably something that doesn’t stack up.
“It was not a very stressful race, but I just didn’t have a chance. People around me were faster, I was overtaken and it was very difficult to manage myself to stay on track.
“Physically it was not a tough race at all, because I could never attack, the car didn’t allow me to do what I like, so now we need to have a look at why and, obviously, we have the next weekend, so we can try and do better.”
Vettel doesn’t believe his set-up was to blame: “On paper both cars are pretty similar, so it was not the set-up. I mean, we need to have a look because, also, if you look around the lap there isn’t one place where I’m driving poorly. There seems to be an issue, as it’s in the whole lap I’m losing time, so we need to have a look.”
Vettel now sits 12th in the standings with just ten points – a best finish of sixth – whilst Leclerc holds fifth on 33 points with two podium finishes.
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