Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel says the pace seen during the first two free practice session at Baku was his fault and not the car.
The four-time world champion finished the first practice session at the 10th place and in the second one, he came 11th. It was suggested that the slow pace of his SF71H was due to a bad setup.
But Vettel said he was responsible for the slow pace and not the car. the German insisted he could not find the limits fast enough to be effective on the track.
“This place is a little bit tricky to find the rhythm, it is not so easy,” he said. “This morning I didn’t find it and at the beginning of the second session, I wasn’t up to speed.
“But I was pretty happy with the long run in the end so it is okay.”
He added: “I think the car is fine. As I said, I didn’t get the laps together. It can happen very easily here with little mistakes here in braking – but the long run was a lot better.
“We can improve the car a lot for tomorrow and then we should be okay.”
While Vettel stumbled on the first day Kimi Raikkonen spent most of the FP1 time making a few setup changes to the car. In the first session, he came 15th on the timesheets. But by FP2, his set up changes seem to pay off as the Iceman improved tremendously to finish second in the race, just 0.069s behind the pace setter of the session.
Although Vettel fumbled in the first two races, it is not yet over for the German driver. Since the last three races, his performance is usually dull on Fridays. But on Saturdays, he bounces back hard. So let us see how he performs in the final practice session and then in the qualifying race.
