Sebastian Vettel lamented his Ferrari’s handling in the latter part of last weekend’s US Grand Prix, with the cause apparently related to a large build-up of rubber particles on his car’s rear wing.
The build-up ultimately rendered the rear wing inefficient as it lost downforce and subsequently affected the Ferrari’s handling, providing the German with a scary moment in the first sector.
“It was quite violent,” explained Vettel.
“It is quite surprising if you lose downforce very suddenly. It’s not like someone is knocking one or two seconds before, and tells you you’re about to lose the car, so I was quite lucky in that instance to be able to save it.
“It was quite a big snap. We were travelling at quite high speeds but I was able to save the car. I had a couple of moments in the race and after that, I slowed down a bit to take it easy as we didn’t have anywhere to go.
“We were 10 seconds behind Daniel [Ricciardo] and there was nothing going on behind.”
Fortunately, Vettel was in a position to take a free pit-stop four laps from the checkered flag, during which the Scuderia crew wiped the rear wing clean and fitted a new set of SuperSoft tyres.
Vettel also offered some insight into the Scuderia’s relative performance compared with Japan where the SF16-H fared much better.
“I think it’s fair to say that some parts of the track are largely similar to Japan, and it’s fair to say we were not as competitive as in Japan.
“All in all it was a difficult weekend. For sure in the race we were closer in terms of competitiveness than in qualifying but overall not as quick.
“We have some ideas, which I think we have also had some lessons earlier in the season that in certain conditions maybe our car isn’t as good as we would like.
“It’s something we’ve worked on, we’ve made progress but still some work to do.”