Formula One: Ferrari’s poor qualifying augurs ill for landmark race

Four time world champion German Sebastian Vettel failed to find the speed he needed and wound up qualifying ninth for Sunday’s classic race at the majestic Ardennes circuit.

Lewis Hamilton annihilated his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg yet again to easily win pole for the Belgian Grand Prix F1 race at Spa with a lap of 1m47.197s.

“It was disappointing considering I had a good feel throughout qualifying and the worst lap, or worst part for us, was the last one”, said Vettel, 42 points adrift of leader Hamilton in the championship.

Raikkonen is hoping the Ferrari will be better in race specification than it was in qualifying.

“The lap was fine until the last corner where I went in too deep and had a very poor exit. It was a costly mistake and I’m not happy”.

“I don’t know exactly what happened, I lost some drive and had to stop”, Raikkonen said.

“We have made impressive progress and that makes me confident tomorrow – we will be quicker than some of the cars in front of us”, added Vettel. Tomorrow it will be different there is some rain forecast but even without that we should have good pace and anything can happen.

In the sister Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen had a more trying day as he suffered a fall in oil pressure that caused his vehicle to grind to a halt during Q2. “There is some potential for a chaotic start but we have the whole race to make an improvement”.

Raikkonen said his vehicle had been handling well before the problem.

“My starting position will make my race very tricky but I hope that the race condition will turn in our favour”. “My position could have been a bit better but we’ll keep fighting and try to do the best we can and see where we end up”.