I Was Lucky to Get Second – Sebastian Vettel

It was a dream come true for any Ferrari fan as the Scuderia pulled off a dream front-row lock-out. To make matters even better the 1-2 was in Ferrari’s backyard at the Italian Grand Prix. Championship contender, Sebastian Vettel was delighted to achieve a 1-2. However, he was disappointed to miss out on pole himself.

The German topped the first two rounds of qualifying, but finished up 0.161s slower than Kimi Raikkonen in the final session.

The Finn’s lap clocked in at 1:19.119s with an average speed of 263.587kph – the fastest ever recorded in an official Formula 1 session.

“This is great for tomorrow,” said Raikkonen, “But it’s only job half done.

“Hopefully tomorrow everything will go smoothly and we end up in the same positions. Hopefully it will be as good as today.”

This was Raikkonen’s 18th career pole position, and his first since Monaco in 2017. His last pole position was at the 2008 French Grand Prix.

“I can’t think of a better place to be on pole than our home Grand Prix in front of all the Tifosi,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where we go around the world, but obviously here, home grand prix, full of the great Tifosi [is special].”

However, it was bittersweet for Vettel who was less thrilled by the outcome of qualifying. In his last run, he had been sent out first, allowing Raikkonen to get the benefit of the slipstream.

Vettel even snapped on the radio, “We speak after”. However, he denied questioning Ferrari’s decision to send him out in front of Raikkonen.

“We have an order that changes every week,” he said. “This weekend was Kimi to go second, simple.”

“Clearly I wasn’t happy but I don’t tell you why,” he continued, denying that he planned to ask the team to impose team orders for the start of tomorrow’s race. “No, I don’t think anything related to that.

“It’s a good result for the team,” he insisted. “Not entirely happy with my last run, but I think Kimi was just a little too fast in the end.

“For now it’s great to have both cars at the front.

“To be honest it was not a tidy lap. The other laps were actually better,” he admitted. “I lost a bit at the first chicane, second chicane, the Lesmos, pretty much a bit everywhere.

“The last sector was okay but not fantastic, so just not a good lap and not good enough obviously. I was lucky to get second instead of third. But it was just not good enough,”.