Vettel: “The soft tire will last longer on the rubber track”

Sebastian Vettel admitted Red Bull is struggling with soft tires at the Indian GP. Although the German set the fastest time in both Friday practice sessions ahead of his teammate, Mark Webber, the world champion was only able to complete five laps on the option compound in the afternoon. Lotus and Ferrari have completed longer stints but according to Vettel the problem of accentuated degradation of the soft compound will be common to all teams and should be reduced with the progressive rubberization of the track.

“The soft tire isn't lasting very long but it's Friday, the track is rubberizing and usually improves on Saturday,” Vettel said. “Plus we haven't used this compound for a long time so I think it should be better tomorrow. It happens simply by turning, the tire seems to get too hot and it ends. It's like this for everyone, so on Sunday we could see a short stint with the option tires but as I said usually the track improves and therefore the general situation too. Drivers and teams are used to managing tires with ad hoc adjustments to the set-up. However, I don't think we'll be able to do many laps on Sunday with the soft tire but probably more than today."

Vettel explained that he had a problem in his run on the soft tires and was worried about a possible reliability problem: “To be honest we weren't sure after the run on the options. The last time I did was a little slow in the last two corners but we didn't know why. We checked the car to make sure nothing was broken but obviously we went out for a long run again and the car was fine. We will take another look to understand what happened."