Vettel: We made the choice all together

As a result, Vettel ended the session down in ninth, while title rival Lewis Hamilton led another Mercedes front row lockout with his 80th pole-winning lap.

With the German trailing the Briton by 50-points, and five rounds remaining, this was a setback he and the Scuderia can ill afford in both the title campaigns against Mercedes.

The mistake came when the Ferrari pitwall opted to run both their cars on Pirelli intermediates as Q3 got underway, with a sky heavy with rain over the circuit, very briefly it appeared an inspired choice but soon it was clear the track was still dry enough for hot laps.

Thus, while Hamilton and Bottas scorched around Suzuka on the last bit of optimum grip on their first runs, both Ferraris trundled back to the pits, their gaffe evident to all, for slicks.

But it was too late, although Raikkonen squeezed out a last-ditch flyer to claim fourth, albeit 1.7 seconds shy of the top time while, Vettel running about 10 seconds behind his teammate was caught as enough rain came down to destroy final effort. Time wasted on intermediates cost them on.

Afterwards, Vettel told reporters, “It does not matter who makes the choice of the tyres, we made the choice all together.”

“It was a wrong choice. But at that time making laps with the intermediates seemed a risk to be taken. Had the rain arrived before, we would have been the heroes. These things happen. I agreed. It was shared. Then we saw it was the wrong choice.”

Ferrari had a subdued Friday, trailing Mercedes by eight tenths at the end of the day, but the Reds were adamant that they were doing their own thing on the first day.

By the end of the Saturday morning FP3 session, the gap between Hamilton and Vettel was a tenth and thus set the stage for what might have been a close qualy, but the fumble turned it into a no contest.

Vettel explained. “It’s not the position we deserve to be in. We have more speed than ninth but we start there and see how it goes.”

“It was not our day. I had a snap in Spoon which didn’t help but not our qualifying. I think the first run was OK. But I had a mistake so lost most of the time there but the second run we obviously didn’t make it out on time because the rain came."

“I think we made a step from yesterday but obviously we weren’t able to show it."

"Tomorrow is a new day, it won’t be easy when you start further back but it’s not impossible,” added Vettel who will start the race from eighth on the grid due to a penalty handed to Force India' Esteban Ocon.