Vettel: Ferrari must accept where we are
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Sebastian Vettel has called on Ferrari to turnaround its 2019 Formula 1 campaign after the all-important qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix ended with teammate Charles Leclerc out in Q1 while the German driver could only reach fourth place.After a tough start to 2019, despite coming into the season with the best fancied package on the grid, Ferrari endured a nightmare Saturday in Monaco which was triggered by Vettel’s early FP3 into the barriers at Sainte Devote.Looking to shake off the in qualifying, Vettel required a final flying lap to escape the drop zone in Q1 but consequently pushed out teammate Leclerc after Ferrari opted not to run him again having felt confident his provisional time was enough to reach Q2.With Vettel the sole hope for Ferrari for the remainder of qualifying he grabbed fourth place in Q3, 0.781s off pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton who headed up a Mercedes front-row lockout in front of Valtteri Bottas with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in third place.Despite his FP3 hampering his early qualifying laps, Vettel refused to blame the off and has issued a rallying cry to Ferrari after it came under fire for poor strategy calls.“I think this morning has nothing to do with that [qualifying],” Vettel said. “So, I don’t want to shift the blame. In the afternoon, certainly the first two laps you need to sort of rebuild and get into the rhythm, but then again I’ve been many times around here so that’s not a problem.“We struggled to get the tyres to work and then you just don’t get the feel that you want and you need especially the front tyres for us didn’t work today.“We need to dig deeper. We are, already, trying to understand as much as we can. Sometimes it works.“This morning Charles was quite happy and the few laps I had as well but this afternoon wasn’t quite like that so yeah. For now, it is what it is, we need accept it even if we don’t want to. But we go from there.”With Vettel fourth, Leclerc lines up a provisional 16th place for the Moncao Grand Prix – subject to FIA stewards investigations on Pierre Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi.
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