Vettel fastest in second Malaysia Grand Prix practice

Vettel will start from the back of the grid for Sunday’s race at Sepang, with title rival Lewis Hamilton on pole, after a turbo pressure issue meant he could not complete a timed lap in Q1.

Mercedes’ job was made easier by Vettel’s engine troubles in Q1 which eliminated him from qualifying, leaving the German set to start Sunday’s race from the very back of the grid.

Vettel needed an engine change to his Ferrari after the last practice at Sepang on Saturdy and immediately suffered a problem which could not be fixed in the first qualifying session. The Red Bulls were half a second off and Valtteri Bottas was almost 0.9s further back, setting up a shootout between Hamilton and Raikkonen.

Wasn’t this supposed to be Ferrari’s pole? Raikkonen did absolutely everything possible to usurp the Mercedes star and put in a fantastic lap in response, but the Ferrari man missed out by 0.045 seconds. However, teammate Valtteri Bottas only sits 51 points behind his teammate. On Friday they were well off the pace, Hamilton was sixth in the second session and the team believed the auto had a fundamental issue they needed to solve but he was still over a half a second back in fifth on Saturday morning.

But Mercedes were in the ball park from the start of qualifying and Hamilton pulled out another stunning lap to secure pole.

With less than 3 minutes left, the drivers were now readying for the final laps. The lights went off, we did our start, everyone was trying to do his start and then the way it happened it ended up pretty bad for all three of us, but that’s the way it went.

The four-time Formula 1 world champion endured a nightmare Saturday in Sepang after an engine issue at the end of FP3 forced a power unit change just two hours before qualifying.

He returned to the pits but the team ran out of time to diagnose the problem, let alone fix it. “We save some tyres and who knows what will happen tomorrow if we have rain or a safety vehicle?”

“We’re hoping that we’re able to find our bearings overnight and regroup for tomorrow”. It is what it is. “At the last race the auto was really good in the rain, this morning the vehicle was just as bad as it was in P2 in the dry”. The auto is quick.

“Overtaking here is more straight-forward but, if you have a quick auto you can produce big drivers, let’s see where it can take us”.

Asked whether the new parts worked well, Alonso said: “They didn’t today”. This afternoon we didn’t get the running that we wanted due to the red flag, apart from that it was OK.

“We and Ferrari, we take no prisoners”, said Wolff.

OUT: Felipe Massa (Williams), Jolyon Palmer (Renault), Lance Stroll (Williams), Carlos Sainz (Toro Rosso), Pierre Gasly (Toro Rosso).

“The direction I went into, performance wise, was not ideal but at least I could still drive the vehicle like that”.