Sebastian Vettel was quick to heap praise on the Ferrari Formula 1 team after taking his second pole position for the Italian marque in qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix on Saturday.
Vettel edged teammate Kimi Raikkonen by just 0.059 seconds in the final stage of qualifying to grab his first pole position since the 2015 Singapore Grand Prix, heading up a Ferrari one-two, the first since France 2008.
The result saw Ferrari end Mercedes’ 18-race streak of pole positions and continue its impressive start to the season that has seen Vettel win two of the first three races.
“I had a good start to the session to qualifying this afternoon,” Vettel explained. “I was feeling reasonably comfortable. Then I think in Q2 I lost a little bit the rhythm, so my final run in Q2 which I thought would give me enough of an idea for Q3 for the final segment would put me in place, but it went wrong. I locked up and lost a bit the rhythm.
“Then in Q3, the first run was not really tidy, so I left it to the end. Then I got a good lap in and improved in the final sector, made up some time from the lap before. I knew it would be tight, I knew also that I would be the first one to cross the line.
“By going quicker than what I saw on the screen before with Kimi, I knew that for now I’m ahead, but then I immediately opened the radio and asked about everyone else, ‘tell me about the others!’, and then my race engineer Ricardo told me they are closing the lap, closing the lap, I said ‘yeah let me know, how are the sectors, how are the split times!’ The first one I got was Valtteri, who didn’t manage to improve, and then when I got the message that we got it, I was over the moon.”
Vettel thanked the Ferrari team that had put together the SF70H car, but stressed that there are no points awarded for Saturday.
“Big thank you to the team, I think the car was phenomenal this afternoon. It really was a pleasure to take a seat and go around with low fuel and just try and push it to the limit,” Vettel said.
“If you have rhythm here it’s just fantastic. Glad I got it back, and big thanks to the team. It’s a team effort and a great result for us to have both cars on the front row. It’s only part of the job. The main job is tomorrow, but for now, yeah, it’s an important step.
“We managed to improve a little bit. Maybe the circuit came our way as well. But it’s a very good result and I’m sure everyone is very happy and very proud, so we’ll enjoy that, but in a couple of hours obviously start focusing on the race.”
The Russian Grand Prix is live on NBCSN and the NBC Sports app from 7am ET on Sunday.
