F1: Vettel Salvages Third On Grid After Difficult Weekend

Formula 1

F1: Vettel Salvages Third On Grid After Difficult Weekend

Sebastian Vettel was no match for Lewis Hamilton in Hungarian GP qualifying...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted July 28, 2012 Budapest (HUN)

Sebastian Vettel managed to salvage third place on the Hungarian GP grid after a frustrating two days for the World Champion.

Vettel was struggling for a good balance Friday, and while Red Bull usually turns things around overnight, he was even less happy Saturday morning.

However, the situation was improved for qualifying.

“I think for us it more a difficulty of getting everything to work properly,” said Vettel. “I think the speed is there, but it seems extremely difficult once you lose the balance a little bit. So I think we were struggling a little bit with that in qualifying. Throughout qualifying I think it got better. We shot through all the tires, more or less.

“I knew I only had one set in Q3. I’m not entirely happy with the lap I had. I think Romain (Grosjean, second place) was in reach. I think Lewis (Hamilton, pole winner) was probably a bit too far away today. But I think with the progress we made this morning and through qualifying, we should be in a good position tomorrow for the race.

“I think yesterday afternoon we were quite happy. This morning we weren’t that happy, and in qualifying it seemed to get better again. So, we’ll see. I think it should be a good race tomorrow. I think the pace with fuel in the car is probably a little bit better than without fuel, so we’ll see what we can do.”

Vettel continues to insist that the engine mapping clampdown has had little impact: “No, I don't think it really affected us as much as people think. As I said, we were struggling a little bit generally to find a balance throughout the weekend and qualifying, but it has nothing to do with the mapping.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.