Vettel: Shame to miss pole, happy Ferrari are back

Sebastian Vettel says he ends qualifying for the United States Grand Prix with mixed emotions knowing he had the car to fight for pole position but will ultimately start the race down in fifth place to push his F1 title challenge closer to the edge.

The Ferrari driver missed out on pole position to F1 title rival Lewis Hamilton by 0.061s but felt with the margin so tight he could have beaten the Mercedes driver to a third career pole at Circuit of the Americas.

Vettel’s additional anguish comes from his three-place grid penalty which demotes him to fifth place behind teammate Kimi Raikkonen, Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, with each place increasing the challenge of keeping his F1 world title fight alive.

“It was pretty close but always a bit of a shame to miss out on just that bit of time,” Vettel said. “Six-hundredths, I think you can always debate that you had that somewhere. I was pretty happy with the lap. I think it was quite tricky to get everything together.”

Vettel’s contrasting emotions also reflected on his Ferrari’s car performance, which had suffered over the past two races against Mercedes, but at COTA appeared to be on par with the reigning F1 champions as Ferrari stormed to a 1-2 in the sole dry practice session in FP3.

“I think given the last couple of weeks that we had we are pretty happy that they're back in range,” he said. “Today has been a positive surprise I guess for both of us to see how competitive we have been today given how far we’ve been behind for the last two races. There are some positives but if you are that close you probably want to be ahead.”

Vettel must not concede eight points or more to Hamilton to keep his F1 world championship hopes alive at the United States Grand Prix. The German driver currently trails his title rival by 67 points and if Hamilton wins in America he must finish in second place to keep the championship battle going to next week’s Mexican round.