Sebastian Vettel feels he could have secured third on Sunday's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix grid, but a mistake by Max Verstappen ahead of him caused him to lose some rhythm and the tenth he needed to slot in behind the Mercedes cars.
Vettel qualified just +0.072 slower than Daniel Ricciardo in third, but an incredibly tight fight behind Mercedes meant those few hundredths cost him two positions, dropping him to fifth behind Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.
"He [Verstappen] went off, I saw some smoke, I got past him," he explained.
"I don't think he was in the way, but I lost a little bit the rhythm and the last sector wasn't as tidy as it should've been. Otherwise I think we would have gone to P3."
Verstappen alluded to the lock-up and believes he too had the pace to be third on the grid.
"I’m pretty disappointed with sixth today," said Verstappen. "Qualifying up until Q3 went very well, we had no issues and didn’t touch the car.
"In my last run I was pushing hard and a few tenths up but I locked up into turn 11, if not for that I feel I would have been around P3. It was a bit unfortunate as my pace was there and the car felt good."
