MEXICO CITY, Mexico -- Sebastian Vettel says his Ferrari should have secured a front row grid slot at the Mexican Grand Prix after struggling to seventh in qualifying on Saturday.
Vettel had been the fastest driver in Friday practice, but when track temperatures increased on Saturday the Ferraris seemed unable to unlock the pace advantage offered by the super-soft. Vettel's time on the soft tyre in Q2 was only 0.004s slower than his time on the super-softs in Q3, despite other drivers finding over half a second between the two compounds.
"I think this weekend has been very positive up until qualifying, so I was really looking forward to it and the car deserved to be on the first row in my point of view," he said. "I don't think that's optimistic, I think that's realistic, but as a fact that didn't turn out to be realistic because we only qualified sixth and seventh.
"Clearly something didn't go our way, but we still have a good feeling about the car around this track. Hopefully we can show that tomorrow, but obviously for now we are very disappointed because I don't need to explain to you that it's a lot harder on a Sunday to start seventh compared to the front row."
Asked to explain why Ferrari had struggled so much on the super-soft, Vettel said: "I think the fact that we go faster on the soft than the super-soft means we found more grip. I found more grip with the softs than with the super-softs, which is pretty unnatural and something we need to look in to.
"As I said, this morning we struggled on the super-soft and yesterday it wasn't the case. Something happened, but in terms of conditions it shouldn't have been a big difference and if anything better this afternoon with a hotter track. Yesterday was fairly overcast and today was sunny, so we were just struggling overall to get the grip from the tyres."
Because Vettel qualified on the soft tyre in Q2 he will start the race on that compound, and he believes that could be a big advantage for Sunday's race.
"Yeah, it could be interesting. Tomorrow is completely different -- one lap is very different to doing many laps in the race and I think we tried it and it worked for both of us. That's positive and it should help us in terms of race pace and finding the right strategy, I hope."