Sebastian Vettel confident after pushing Mercedes in F1 qualifying

Sebastian Vettel said he was pleased with qualifying third in Canada despite just missing out on beating the Mercedes drivers.

Against expectations, Vettel was only a tenth of a second off the Mercedes pace when it mattered in Q3.

“I think going into qualifying I thought it was possible,” he said. “As a driver you always feel that there’s a little bit more. I think on my last lap I was very happy with the lap in general, I was maybe a bit greedy out of 10 and maybe not greedy enough into turn six, but there wasn’t an awful lot to grab otherwise, as I said, very happy.

“I wanted to get below the 1m13s mark because then I knew it would be very close with the Mercedes. I did that but just by one hundredth so a little bit was missing, but overall I think we have a great car, we did a step, so I’m happy with how the weekend has turned out. We did a step or so overnight so I felt in general very comfortable and enjoyed qualifying a lot. I brushed the Wall of Champions so done that, don’t have to do that tomorrow, so we should be all set.”

Regarding Ferrari's turbo upgrade for this race, he said: “I think we expected to bring performance to the car and that’s what it did. I think this is probably a track where it’s quite important. There are a lot of straights so yeah, I think that’s why we decided to bring it here as well and as I said, it worked and it should help us also tomorrow, not just today.”