Vettel: It wasn’t a good day

Their race simulations were nowhere compared to Mercedes while Vettel's best time was half a second down on Lewis Hamilton's timesheet-topping effort.

With ten minutes to go in the session, seeking track space for a hot lap which he could not find, an irate Vettel complained over the radio: "I'm looking at the GPS at the moment and there are cars everywhere. I don't think there are many cars not in traffic at the moment."

Later in the media pen, he told reporters, "Obviously, we looked quite far away from the rest of the field so not ideal. We were struggling a bit for one lap, but also on the long run, I think we went through our tyres a bit harder and quicker than the rest so we need to have a look."

Kimi Raikkonen was sixth on the timing screens at the end of the day in the sister car, but a full second down on Hamilton and half of that off Vettel's best.

The German added, “Just looking at ourselves it wasn’t a good day. I think in terms of the car there is more that we need to get to.”

"That is Friday for you, sometimes we have better Fridays than others. I think the first run wasn’t a particularly clean run but it was good enough."

“I think we struggled with the tyres, with and without traffic. Certainly, the traffic doesn’t help but I think we have some work to do, as we need to find the reasons for that and come back stronger."

"However, I am positive as ever, as I think that tomorrow and on Sunday it will be better and we’ll find out the right things to apply."

"We want to put both cars on the front row tomorrow; we don’t know yet what will happen, but we’ll try to do our best as pole is the best place to start from,” added Vettel who set the fastest lap in the morning FP1 session.