Scuderia Ferrari German driver Sebastian Vettel hopes he and his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen can use the advantage of two cars at the front of the grid in order to put pole position sitter Lewis Hamilton under pressure at the start of the 2017 British Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver swept to pole position for his home race at Silverstone with a half second buffer back to Kimi, while Sebastian finished in third place.
Valtteri Bottas, meanwhile, qualified only in fourth position, and will havee to drop to ninth place on the grid due to a gearbox penalty, leaving Lewis Hamilton on his own up front against the two Scuderia Ferrari drivers: “There’s always an opportunity, so we’ll see. The target is to put him under pressure, he’s been certainly very competitive all weekend, nevertheless I think it’s been a positive day for us.” – Sebastian Vettel said, as reported by the Italian media at the end of the qualifying session on Saturday.
On his final Q3 run, in which he finished behind his team-mate, Sebastian Vettel rued tyre warm-up issues, adding: “I was a bit compromised, in the first sector especially. The tyres were not where they should have been, they [Ferrari] should have seen that on the out lap that I was a bit in traffic, in a bunch of three of four cars. It’s not ideal but anyway it is a decent result, the most important [thing] is car is good, we improved it for today and also tomorrow it should be better.” – the Formula One champions leader explained.
Kimi Raikkonen echoed Vettel’s comments and believes Scuderia Ferrari can ramp up the pressure in race trim: “I don’t know how exactly how far we were from the first, but we can guess where we were giving away lap time. We have a good car, obviously it’s not fast enough [over one lap], but for the race I think we can challenge them and give [him] a good run with both of us there so we’ll try and make the best out of it.” – the Finnish driver concluded, as reported by the Italian newspaper Tuttosport.
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