No prancing horses as Vettel starts from last
THERE were glum faces everywhere inside the Ferrari pit as Sebastian Vettel suffered a major blow to his world championship hopes after failing to set a time in qualifying at the Petronas Malaysia Formula 1 Grand Prix.
An engine failure ruled the German out of qualifying, relegating him to the back of the grid for today’s 56-lap race at the Sepang International Circuit.
Vettel is 28 points behind Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton in the overall standings with six races to go, including the Malaysia GP.
To make it worse, Hamilton, who is leading with 263 points, is starting from pole today.
Vettel was left downbeat but he put on a brave front in front of the cameras later, saying it was “part of motor racing”.
He was fastest in the second practice on Friday for Ferrari but how his fortunes have changed.
“For sure, it’s not ideal. It’s not what we want, especially on a day where you feel that you’ve got it in you and you’ve got it in the car, but we won’t be able to prove that,” said Vettel.
“It’s a pretty bad day.” Ferrari mechanics worked frantically for two hours to replace Vettel’s engine after the power unit suffered a glitch during the third practice earlier.
Vettel later limped back into the pit as he reported loss of power in the engine.
“We need to see now what was the problem but we managed the change successfully in time – the guys pulled off a miracle and worked like crazy.
“It’s a shame that we couldn’t get it out,” said Vettel.
His teammate Kimi Raikkonen was disappointed not to knock Hamilton off the top spot.
Raikkonen was only 0.045 of a second away from Hamilton’s pole time.
“When you get that close, it’s disappointing. But I know I made the most out of it.
“You always find some things to improve on but the car has behaving nicely all weekend.
“We will try to do better tomorrow,” said the Finn, who bagged his first win in Formula 1 back in 2003 while driving for McLaren.