German Grand Prix – Sebastian Vettel will start Sunday’s race at Hockenheim from plum last after not being able to take part in qualifying.
Ferrari have looked impressively fast throughout the practice sessions at Hockenheim, ahead of Sunday’s race at the German Grand Prix venue. The final practice session on Saturday morning saw Charles Leclerc top the timesheets and hopes were high for the red cars to prove serious challengers for the pole position during the afternoon.
However, just moments into the qualifying session beginning, pulses started racing at Ferrari as Sebastian Vettel radioed in from his outlap to report he was feeling a lack of power. Coming around the circuit slowly, he returned to the pits to allow his mechanics to pore over the car and try to get him back out on track.
However, the issue proved too big to fix in the short Q1 session and Vettel was forced to climb out of the car and watch the rest of qualifying in the garage. With no time set, he will start from P20 and last.
Ferrari later confirmed the issue to be turbo related, saying that airflow to the turbo proved to be too big a hurdle to fix in time.
Despite starting from P20 at his home race after looking like one of the main challengers for pole position, Vettel tried to put a brave face on it as he spoke to reporters afterwards: “I don’t know what happened, something broke on the turbo and that was game over from there. Very disappointed as I think the car is very good, we lost out on a big chance but hopefully we’ll have a big one coming again tomorrow.”
“I’m looking forward to the race, but obviously it would have been nicer to start at the very front rather than the very back but…we’ll see what happens.”
