How Aston Martin driver Sebastian Vettel classifies the Formula 1 Friday practice in Monza and why he expects another difficult weekend.
“We’re still having a little trouble here,” said Sebastian Vettel to “Sky” after Friday practice at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix in Monza. The four-time Formula 1 World Champion and his Aston Martin team-mate Lance Stroll only finished 17th and 18th at the start, more than two seconds behind the leaders.
And Vettel went into the weekend with a handicap: In the first free practice session, he left his AMR22 to “Friday driver” Nyck de Vries and only contested the second free practice session himself. Nevertheless, he “got into the rhythm quite well,” says Vettel.
However, with a total of 26 laps at Monza, he found that Aston Martin had a “difficult weekend” ahead of him, because the car was “quite difficult” to drive. Vettel continues: “I think we’re losing time everywhere at the moment.”
Where Vettel still sees room for improvement
The ex-champion sees the greatest potential for improvement “in the corners”, but only if his team succeeds in finding a “better balance” for the vehicle. This is exactly what Vettel missed in Friday practice: “The car felt very stiff today. This is particularly noticeable here. And a stiff car is even more difficult to drive with little downforce.”
This is probably one of the reasons why his fastest lap on Friday was “not very good in terms of driving,” says Vettel. He “didn’t time the second round so well either” and was therefore not very satisfied. “We can still improve there and hopefully get a little more out of it with a little more experience in these conditions and with a better set-up.”
Is Q1 the end of the line for Aston Martin again?
The only question is whether the increase at Aston Martin is so great that Vettel can have hopes of progressing in qualifying. Vettel was recently eliminated in Q1 three times in a row.
“Obviously I hope we do [in Monza] get out of Q1,” says Vettel. “It will be difficult enough because the field is very close together here. And today, as I said, I wasn’t very strong. We definitely have to find more time for Saturday than the people in front of us.”
Whether at least the team-internal slipstream can help? Aston Martin was one of the teams that at least tried running the cars in tandem in Friday practice. But Stroll says: “The slipstream doesn’t seem to be that great with this generation of cars. That could change the dynamics in qualifying quite a bit.”
Vettel also “doesn’t really think” of slipstreaming for a quick lap. He says: ” “If we both at the same time [für fliegende Runden] are on the track, we don’t have much of a chance. We just have to focus on ourselves then and on making it out of Q1.”
But first of all, the Aston Martin AMR22 has to be “tamed”, explains Vettel. “All in all, our car still jumps a bit too much and has little grip. And we have to find more pace.”