Saturday, August 27, 2011

Vettel 'rediscovered Spa'

Sebastian Vettel said he "rediscovered Spa" in qualifying as he took pole position for the Belgian Grand Prix.

Vettel toppled Lewis Hamilton at the top of the timesheets with his very last lap of the session as the drying track saw lap times constantly improving. Having not been quickest in any session so far this weekend Vettel admitted he hadn't felt comfortable at the start of qualifying, but that he found more and more time as the session went on.

"It was a difficult session all in all," Vettel said. "Q1 and Q2 were very conditions, the circuit was surprisingly drying out very quickly, but it's quite tricky on the inters so the main target was to get through. I didn't feel very comfortable right at the beginning, but then in Q2 I think we could make a big step forward. I rediscovered Spa in a way and found some better lines than all weekend. So that was an important step, and then in Q3 obviously we were quite sure it was dry tyres, but also quite sure that if it didn't start to rain it would be all down to the last lap because the circuit would just improve."

Vettel admitted that the circuit wasn't best suited to the RB7 but still had some good characteristics, and said he didn't know how competitive he would be in the race due to the changeable weather conditions.

"Going in to this race we seemed to have a lot of corners, which we like, and a lot of straights, which we dislike! So we'll see. I think all weekend, obviously there wasn't much running but we've been quite happy and quite competitive in all conditions, Mark more than myself. I wasn't really happy yesterday or this morning, but we did the right steps to come back, and especially when it was drying up I was feeling more and more comfortable.

"Tomorrow, I don't know what the forecast is - they say dry but I don't know what are the odds, I don't know if you would put your money on that around here - so we'll see. All in all I think obviously we got the timing right, especially in the last qualifying session I was feeling very good and we got it all together at the right time."

When asked if he had his car set up for wet running Vettel said that two setups were very similar, and that he was comfortable driving the same car in both conditions.

"To be totally frank, these days there's not really a wet setup anymore. It's difficult because from Saturday to Sunday you're not allowed to change anything. There's a couple of things that, yes, if you could guarantee 100% wet running you would go for it, but it's not a massive change anyway."

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