Sebastian Vettel Explains Reason Behind Poor Qualifying Show in Portimao

Sebastian Vettel is out of the second part of the Qualifying session as he will slot in behind Williams’ George Russell in P15 for tomorrow’s race. Vettel, following his outing in Q2,  took to the team radio to show his disappointment as he mentioned that he struggled to get his tires up to the optimum temperature.

Vettel sounded rather disappointed and told his team that his tires were not ready to deliver the lap time that he intended to during his second run. “Yeah, the tires were not ready,” the German said.

“It was better on the first run. But this time I struggled to get the fronts warming up. They weren’t ready for three or for five.”

Ferrari surprised the fans by sending out Vettel on a set of Mediums when the green lights glowed for Q2 on the pit lane exit. Though Vettel, on his first run,  managed to stay inside the top 10 for some time, he was later pushed down out of the contention for Q3 as the others improvised.

During Vettel’s second run, he struggled to bring his tires up to temperature as he could improve only by a few thousands of second to his previous best lap time. In the process, it was a double blow as even Russell improvised well enough to jump ahead of the Ferrari.

Sebastian Vettel out of Q2 for the 8th time in 2020

Ferrari would still be happy with the fact that their gamble paid off with at least one of their drivers, Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque, despite failing to improve his lap time on his second run, still managed to stay inside the top 10 and move into Q3 on the Mediums.

Daniel Ricciardo’s incident played right into his hands as most of the drivers on the flying lap were forced to slow down and abort their laps.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the garage, the nightmare run still continues for Vettel as he failed to enter the third part of qualifying for the 8th time this season. In today’s qualifying, Ferrari looked adamant in giving Vettel the set of Mediums despite his struggles.

So, a question does rise on Ferrari’s gamble with the German in specific. By the end of Vettel’s first run on the yellow-marked tires, he was nearly 0.5 seconds off the driver in P10. Hence, one might wonder why wasn’t Vettel sent out on a set of Softs rather than the Mediums?