Vettel loses 0.4s to ERS issue

Sebastian Vettel said an ERS issue during qualifying cost him around 0.4s per lap but admits Red Bull was too far away from being able to challenge for pole position in Monaco.

Daniel Ricciardo again outqualified Vettel - for the fifth time this season - with the two Red Bulls separated by just 0.2s. Vettel feels he could have been ahead of his team-mate but having been 0.6s off Nico Rosberg's pole time he admitted there was little more to come from the car.

"As far as I'm concerned qualifying was good," Vettel said. "In terms of the car balance we were able to get more or less everything out of the car but unfortunately in Q1 we had a problem with the ERS and basically I lost the ability to discharge at a normal rate so at halfway down the straight I was just relying on the engine

"It was a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it was working and other times it wasn't working, even on the same straight but obviously early in acceleration when you lose out it is quite costly in terms of laptimes. We basically had the same problem until the end of qualifying but towards the end we could run a little bit below the maximum which gave us a little bit of a more consistent discharge but still not full power.

"It didn't cost me enough for pole! I haven't seen any data so I'll speak to the team and engineers. The only comparison that I have seen was to Daniel in Q3 and I was losing about four tenths."

Vettel likened the problem to having a KERS failure in 2013, saying the issue caused him to adapt his driving style somewhat.

"If you don't have the boost, which you could compare to KERS usage last year coming out of the corners, it means that you lose under initial acceleration and then down the whole straight. We obviously didn't have it working for the whole straight so we lost it on both initial acceleration and then on top speed. Sometimes it was [costing] so much that where usually you would upshift to sixth or seventh gear with the problem I didn't have to do the upshift because I was slower."

And Vettel still felt he had more pace to come despite the issue but was another driver affected by Rosberg's off at Mirabeau.

"From my point of view there was nothing that I could do but we tried everything that we could to recover and it didn't work. So obviously at some point you have to just focus on your lap despite how quick the car is down the straight. I think that the circuit was improving and that I did have a little in hand in the last sector but obviously we had the yellow flag at turn five. I saw the double yellows so I slowed down. I was only told now that it was Nico. Maybe went straight, or maybe not, I don't know."