F1: Vettel Sent To Back Of Abu Dhabi Grid

Formula 1

F1: Vettel Sent To Back Of Abu Dhabi Grid

Sebastian Vettel of Germany and Red Bull Racing moves from third to last...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted November 03, 2012 Abu Dhabi (ARE)

Sebastian Vettel will start the Abu Dhabi GP from the back of the grid after being excluded from qualifying for failing to have enough fuel for a sample.

Like Lewis Hamilton in Spain this year, Vettel was investigated for stopping on track at the end of the session without good reason in order to ensure that he had a fuel sample for scrutineering.

However the team was able to convince the stewards that it was a case of force majeure, unlike what happened with McLaren in Barcelona – but there was insufficient fuel to provide a sample, so he was excluded for that rather than for stopping.

Vettel had originally qualified third behind Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber, and the decision means that title rival Fernando Alonso moves up from seventh to sixth.

Speaking to the media after qualifying, Vettel said: “I don’t know why I was asked to stop. I think probably some problem. It shouldn’t be something major.”

Vettel had endured a scrappy session, in large part because he did hardly any laps in FP3 due to brake problems.

“Obviously this morning wasn’t ideal, not being able to run,” he explained after the session. “So we didn’t get probably the answers that we were hoping for. Nevertheless, this afternoon we were settling in quite well and the pace was there, but I think as Mark touched on, McLaren, in particular Lewis, are pretty quick. So they were out of reach today.

“I’m not entirely happy with my qualifying, the last part of qualifying was quite tricky for me. I think I should have been a little bit quicker, whether it would have been enough to beat Mark. Obviously he’s on a different sheet of paper, but all in all I think we can be quite happy. Race pace should be good tomorrow. As we know it’s a long race here and there’s a lot of things that can happen, so looking forward to tomorrow.”

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.

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