Saturday: Red Bull expected a poor qualifying in Monza
The team, reigning four-time world champion, struggled during the qualifying session of the Italian F1 Grand Prix, with Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo relegated to the back of the top 10. The team is relying on a better race pace to improve their performance in the race.
Sebastian Vettel (No.1) – 6th and 8th
For the German, the 8th position is a slight disappointment, even though he wants to put it into perspective: « I think that, realistically, it was possible to finish between 5th and 10th, but it was very close. It’s a shame when you miss two higher places by only a few tenths, but we knew it would be like this today. When the gaps are small, you always think you could have gone faster, but it was probably what we could do today. »
In the race, he believes that the fight will be against the Ferraris, especially Alonso’s: « We should be faster than the McLarens tomorrow, I would say we are on the same level as Ferrari while Williams and Mercedes will be a bit too fast for us, but we will focus on ourselves and see what happens in the race. »
Daniel Ricciardo (No. 3) – 9th and 9th
The Australian will start from the fifth row, just behind his teammate, and is not satisfied with this result: « Even though we expected a challenging qualifying, I’m still disappointed. The 9th position is not really something exciting. Seb is ahead, but he is only eighth too, and team-wise we would have liked to be closer to the top 5. We knew that we couldn’t really challenge the first two rows, but we thought the sixth position would be possible. »
