Vettel says Nakajima cost him time

Date published : 23 May 2009 - 16:43:36

Sebastian Vettel blamed a trundling Kazuki Nakajima for his failure to set a quicker final lap in Q3 after the championship contender only managed to qualify fourth in Monaco.After running below the radar for much of practice following the introduction of a double diffuser onto its RB5 car, Red Bull came to the fore in qualifying with Vettel holding provisional pole during the early stages of the final session.But the German will start on the second row after being unable to match the late improvements from his two Brawn rivals and Ferrari s Kimi Raikkonen the first time this season Vettel has not set one of the three fastest times in Q3.He claims his chances of continuing that sequence were scuppered by traffic in the closing stages of his crucial final lap, with Nakajima being the main offender, and is now left hoping for a better result in the race. As I came out of Rascasse, Nakajima was almost stopped on the circuit and, you know, if you want to get everything right here in qualifying you have to have a clear lap, Vettel said. That wasn t the case on the last half of my lap when I was stuck in traffic when that happens you lose downforce and start to slide, so it s anything but qualifying! It was a shame today as the car was good and we could have done better but there are 78 laps to go, so let s see what happens tomorrow. Monaco specialist Mark Webber meanwhile one of the pre-event favourites to star this weekend will line up eighth after again failing to match Vettel.However the Australian was far from disheartened with the result as he believes he has a strong fuel strategy for the race, although he concedes he should have perhaps completed an extra fast lap to try and improve his position in the tightly-packed top 10. That wasn t too bad, we knew it was going very tight, but we have a reasonable strategy tomorrow, he said. There are some different ideas going round about what tyres everyone will start the on, as the hard and soft tyres have different characteristics in race conditions. I m reasonably happy with what I did today, maybe we could done a different strategy in Q3 it was my idea do one run, but maybe we should have doneTeam boss Christian Horner admitted he was slightly disappointed with the team s Q3 result, while, like Vettel, he was at loss to explain why Nakajima had been so extraordinarily slow . A frustrating final Q3, when unfortunately Nakajima cost Sebastian some time he seemed extraordinarily slow despite Sebastian giving plenty of room before starting his final lap. Mark managed to save a set of tyres with a very good time in Q2, but in Q3 he was unfortunately at wrong end of a tenth of a second, but we believe we have a good strategy for tomorrow.