Sebastian Vettel expressed relief that he “only spun once” during a difficult Austrian Grand Prix, as he and Ferrari struggled for performance.
Ferrari lacked pace with its SF1000 throughout the weekend and Vettel was eliminated from Q2 in qualifying, and made minimal progress during the early stages of the race.
Vettel held eighth place when he spun at Turn 3 after the first restart, dropping down the order, from which he recovered only to 10th position in a race with 11 finishers.
“To be honest I’m happy I only spun once,” he said. “It was very difficult. It got very tight, I think Carlos turned in and I was just on the edge as I wanted to be as close as possible and lost the rear.
“To be honest I lost the rear a couple of times today I’m quite happy I spun only once.
“We need to have a good look but for sure the car was very difficult today.”
On the weekend performance Vettel commented: “I didn’t have good confidence in the car, it’s good we have another race here next week to try and confirm the way the car normally behaves.
“I was quite happy in winter testing, based on the car last year it seems a little bit better in cornering and the balance for half of the weekend was good and for the other half my side wasn’t good.
“It’s a question mark right now to see and understand whether there was something wrong.
“As I mentioned not having confidence in the car to really find great consistency in terms of laps and also pace.”
