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Vettel was third fastest in Saturday’s FP3 in the wet and looked set to get a good result in qualifying.
However, the four-time world champion struggled early in the water in Q1, complaining over the radio that the car looked completely different.
He left in 17th position, just ahead of his teammate Lance Stroll, who experienced a similar ordeal.
Immediately after the session, Sebastian Vettel was unable to determine what was wrong.
“We don’t know yet,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com if it was a tire preparation issue. “But there must be something, obviously it was very different.”
“It’s disappointing because I think we could have done a very good result in these conditions, even better than in the dry. So I don’t know, we have to see. It’s too early to say anything. .”
“But given how bad the car was, I wasn’t surprised that we were so slow, but obviously it leaves a bitter feeling.”
Vettel expressed his anger on the radio after crossing the finish line and being told by his engineer that he had been eliminated.
“I’ve already calmed down,” he told the media. “Because what’s the point of being mad now? It’s one of those days when in a wet session, with a car like you want, you can make a difference. And I don’t know what’s happened. So we lost this chance”.
“First of all we have to try to understand what happened, if there is real damage or if we did something wrong.”
Krakow later said that tire pressure was the probable cause of the problems, as the team put them higher in the pits, then were surprised when the track dried up faster than expected.
“We are investigating,” the Aston Martin manager said. “We had no grip. Both riders went out and we didn’t have enough grip. So we went to the pits, did a set-up and put on another set of tyres. And we had a similar problem. So we think it’s related to tire pressure.” .
“We had done quite a lot in the morning and the pressure wasn’t building up very well, so we had to do a lot of laps to increase the pressure.”
“And we thought the conditions were quite similar in qualifying, but there were 20 cars on the track in the afternoon and that probably dried out the track, or made the track faster, much, much faster than expected. .
Krack admitted that the team still doesn’t know much about the Pirelli rain for 2022.
“To be honest, we were the ones who did the first test in Barcelona,” he recalled. “And then driving with these tires in Monaco, for example, is not the same as doing it here. So that’s one of the reasons why we raced a lot in FP3, even if you risk your cars with the walls.”
“But we don’t have a lot of experience with the tyres, especially with the cold, because in Monaco it was also much warmer. So we took advantage of the FP3s to try to learn as much as possible.”
“But maybe it was a bit in the wrong direction.”
Although he started 17th, Vettel believes he can still finish in the top 10.
“I still think we can go ahead and maybe get a point,” Vettel said.
“So let’s see. It’s the same game as always, we’re probably faster than the cars in front of us, we’ll be glued to them at the start, and hopefully we can get a good start, after that we’ll see with the strategy.”
“You can’t do something completely unexpected and come out first. But we have to be vigilant.”
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