Vettel blames himself for disappointing Q3

Sebastian Vettel added to his already disappointing afternoon when he qualified in P6 ahead of the British Grand Prix, which means he will start in P11 on Sunday following a grid-penalty.

Penalised for changing his gearbox, Vettel’s frustrating afternoon continued when he couldn’t quite match the speed he wanted during qualifiers.

During Q3, an array of blunders by the Ferrari driver halted him from placing higher up the grid, while his teammate Kimi Raikkonen will start in P5.

The Scuderia struggled to keep up with the pace of Mercedes and Red Bull throughout the weekend, something the quadruple World Champion is hoping to change during the GP.

"For sure I was on a good lap on the first one, the first attempt [in Q3] and then obviously I lost the rear in Stowe. I was able to catch it but the majority of the lap time was lost," he said.

"Then on the second approach I started similar to the first, but I just went in a little too deep and wide in Turn 1 and then it was difficult to recover from there. So, I didn't have good laps in qualifying when it mattered. I think the pace was actually okay and we were able to split the Red Bulls, but we didn't in the end. That's a shame."

The German also confirmed that his gearbox problem is the same issue he experienced during Friday's practice session.

"We need to understand [it] because we had the same failure yesterday and this morning. We need to have a look," he added.

"I think we took some precautions coming into qualifying and we didn't have the failure in qualifying. We didn't see the failure on Kimi's car [either]. I am fairly confident it will be fine tomorrow but we did get caught out twice with the same problem.

"Yeah, we didn't have it before [coming here], so it might be something related to the track.

"It happened also in the same place, the beginning or end of the lap onto the main straight. We need to have a look and really understand what happened. Rest assured we are looking into that and it is a very high priority because it cost us five positions today. It is something we need to fix, plus if it happens in the race you don't finish."