“For me, when you don’t feel as confident as you would like to, here and there
you struggle to find that extra bit of laptime.
“So you push harder and that makes you more vulnerable to making a mistake.
“Of course, we’ve had difficult times as well, races where we’ve not been the
quickest and been beaten, so it’s not a disaster.
“It’s still early days. It would be wrong to start panicking and reviewing
every single aspect of the car.
“The way we’ve worked has not been bad the last couple of years, nevertheless
today we learned we are not quick enough, and that’s what we want to change.”
Vettel ultimately finished three quarters of a second behind the pole of Lewis
Hamilton as McLaren locked out the front row with team-mate Jenson Button
0.152secs adrift.
Vettel is even behind his own team-mate Mark Webber, who starts a place ahead
of him in fifth, a feat that occurred only three times last year.
“I would love to be further up, but I wasn’t entirely happy with my second run
in Q3 as I made a mistake in the first sector and lost quite a bit,” added
Vettel, whose troubled day began with a spin into the gravel in final
practice.
“We have to accept McLaren are strong and they deserve pole. We wouldn’t have
got there, but we could probably have been two or three positions higher up.
“It didn’t happen, so we start from P5 and P6. We have a good race car, so we
will see what we can do tomorrow.”
Asked whether today was a wake-up call for the team, Vettel said: “You can be
certain we are not happy with this result.
“We always said McLaren were strong, but today they were stronger than
everyone expected them to be.
“Lotus had the potential to surprise, and they did; Mercedes are definitely
closer.
“Although we’re not starting at the front, we are not at the back either, so
it’s far from disastrous.
“We have a long race ahead of us and a lot of opportunities, so I’m looking
forward to it.”