After a third Q1 double exit on Aston Martin’s rebound, Sebastian Vettel said the pace just wasn’t there in Austria.
The pace of a lap was a real struggle to Aston Martin Recently, Vettel and Lance Stroll were eliminated from qualifying after Q1 at Silverstone, as they had been at the Canadian Grand Prix before.
So it was a trio of Q1 double eliminations as Vettel dropped out of Austrian qualifying in P20, his last time suppressed due to track limitations, while Stroll only managed P17 in that Q1 session.
Nonetheless, Vettel’s time wouldn’t have been good enough to escape Q1 on an afternoon when he bluntly claimed Aston Martin was “just slow”.
A tough qualifying session with both cars eliminated in Q1.
We’re gonna put our heads down tonight so we’re ready to push hard in the #F1Sprint. Tomorrow is another day. ? #F1 #Austrian GP pic.twitter.com/xxDm7nYfdC
— Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team (@AstonMartinF1) July 8, 2022
Asked by journalists about this deleted lap time, Vettel replied: “We were just slow. It’s obviously quite hard, I lost time in the first corner, so a double penalty because we also lost the lap.
“But obviously not a good session for us.”
On whether there had been an explanation for the bad pace, Vettel said: “No, obviously very bad and we were weak throughout the session so obviously disappointed.”
Stroll had multiple lap times deleted for track limits during the session as stewards cracked down on violations.
He didn’t try to use that in any excuse, instead supporting Vettel’s claims that the AMR22 just wasn’t good enough to progress.
For Stroll, it was his sixth consecutive elimination in Q1.
On the difficulty of staying within the track limits, Stroll said: “Yeah it was hard for sure, same for everyone. It’s always a challenge here.
“Our base rhythm isn’t really there. We don’t have the load we need in the high-speed corners and we’re not even very good mechanically in the low-speed corners and the balance isn’t great.
“So when you face all of that, it’s always a challenge.”
The good thing for Aston Martin is that their race pace has often been faster, and being a sprint qualifying weekend this means that the team will have two chances to make up for their last poor performance in qualifying.
“Obviously we will try to recover in the sprint and then try to get into a good position for Sunday,” confirmed Stroll.
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