Sebastian Vettel admitted he was disappointed to see the Mercedes team stretch out their gap over the German during the final stage of qualifying having felt confident of reducing the gap before hand.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver has been the best of the rest all weekend behind Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, and will start from third on the grid for Sundays race at Interlagos, but rued the improvement of pace from his rivals.
“I would have loved to be a lot closer to Mercedes, but that was our maximum today,” reflected Vettel. “In Q2 it looked like we could reduce the gap a bit, particularly to Lewis.
“I saw that Nico’s lap wasn’t clean so I expected him to pick it up in Q3. But then both of them did improve, and that was a bit too much for us, we couldn’t follow.”
Vettel hopes to take the fight to the Mercedes team during Sunday’s race in Brazil, and hopes to get a good start to get in the mix. He also knows that anything can happen at this circuit, especially when it comes to the unsettled nature of the weather.
“Let’s see tomorrow, usually in the race we are a bit closer,” said Vettel. “In order to get in front of the Mercedes we need a rocket start, it is not a very long way down to turn one, and a good start always helps.
“In the race trim we are usually a bit better than in qualifying, close enough to put some pressure on them, then I think we can play around with strategy.
“Interlagos is a crazy place, lot of things can happen, you never know what a GP can bring. It was supposed to rain when we arrived, but then we had sunshine all day, there was rain as well but at different times.
“Our target for tomorrow is to give everything and it is our aim to create a miracle. The chance is there and we believe in it.”
