- Italian GP - Qualifying
Eighth 'painful' given fine margins - Vettel
Sebastian Vettel says he is frustrated to qualify in eighth for the Italian Grand Prix behind the two McLarens and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso with just over a tenth separating them all.
Behind Mercedes and Williams there was a clear gap back to the group of McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari in the fight for the third row. Kimi Raikkonen dropped out of Q2 but Alonso was able to jump ahead of Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo, and behind the McLarens, something the world champion admits is frustrating given how little there was to choose between the three.
"I think it was a tight session, around here we knew it would be very tight," Vettel said. "It's painful when you are at the back of this pack of cars who all did more or less the same lap times. That's how it is sometimes, equally in Spa where I was probably in front and then at the back but that's how it goes.
"I think the speed is there to move up but for sure you have to say the two Williams and two Mercedes are too quick for us, not just in qualifying but in race pace. Wheras Ferrari and McLaren are about the same [as Red Bull]."
With such a fine margin separating the three teams Vettel thinks a clean race is more vital than ever.
"Our race pace should be better than today so P8 with hindsight I think was the best we could do. P6 we could have done with more of a tow down the straight, which you need around Monza. I think for tomorrow we should be able to move forward.
"It will be difficult to come up with a completely different strategy because everyone will do the same thing. It's about keeping your head cool and doing all the small steps, getting everything right. Then we will have a good chance to move forward. We hope for a good start and a good first lap and we will go from there.
"We seem to be quite consistent in terms of tyre useage and so on, maybe that helps us be fast consistently rather than for just one lap. Equally that hurts over one lap to extract the maximum from the tyres."
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