Vettel unconcerned about three-place grid penalty

Despite the Suzuka Circuit being known as a difficult track to overtake, Sebastian Vettel is not worried about his three-place grid penalty that he received last week in Malaysian.

After placing fifth on the times during the second free practice, the German speedster claimed that although it is hard to get past another car, it is not impossible.

“It is [difficult], but on the other hand it’s not impossible,” said Vettel, who was handed a grid penalty for crashing into Nico Rosberg last weekend in Sepang.

“Thank God we’re not in Monaco. They say that it might rain as well at some point this weekend, so I think we need to be ready.

“For sure it doesn’t help if you are starting a little bit further back, but overtaking is possible here, even though it’s not easy.”

He also added that he is not too stressed about his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen out-pacing him during FP2, saying that there is still plenty of data to gather before qualifiers on Saturday.

“I think he got a better lap. Overall I’m not entirely happy with the balance, but I think it’s something that we can work on,” he continued.

“I think in the end obviously we had a run on the softs, and also on the very hard tyre in the afternoon.

“We focused more on the soft in the morning. The balance is not yet there, now we’ll look into the data, and see where we are, also compared to the others, and then go from there.

“For now we need to work on the speed of the car. Ideally you would always love to have more grip around here, because it feels fantastic if you do, but I think we can tune the balance and distribute the grip a little bit better, so that we are in better shape tomorrow.”