Sebastian Vettel has explained his post-qualifying team radio message at the Chinese Grand Prix which suggested he believed he could have beaten Mercedes to pole position.

The Ferrari driver qualified three-tenths of a second slower than the Mercedes drivers and seven-tenths of a second off his pole position time at the track last year . After crossing the line he exclaimed “We had it, we had it.

“We know why, though,” he added. “We know why.”

Speaking to media ahead of this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix Vettel said he had been surprised by a change in the wind direction at the end of Q3.

“We saw the wind direction changing a bit,” said Vettel. “I think in all fairness it helped me in the first part of the track to do extremely well but it hurt me in the second part of the track.”

Vettel was just 0.012 seconds slower than Hamilton in the first sector in qualifying but lost most of his time to the Mercedes driver in the final sector which includes a long, 1.4-kilometre straight.

“Inside the car I just lost a lot of time down the straight but I think that goes for everybody,” he said. “After the qualifying I also checked, I lost around two-tenths down the straight. But I know other people did as well.

“At that time I didn’t know it was just me with a headwind. That’s why I thought we had it, then we lost it obviously going down the straight.”

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2019 F1 season