Sebastian Vettel says his crash during testing this morning was caused by a failure at the front-left of his car and the damage is making it difficult to identify what went wrong.

The Ferrari driver crashed at turn three when his SF90 abruptly went straight on during his 40th lap on this morning test.

“We don’t know much more than everyone knows,” said Vettel. “Obviously inside the car I was going into turn three and I had a feeling there was an issue with the front-left corner.

“And then from there there wasn’t anything I could have done to avoid the impact. I wasn’t in control any more and went more or less straight into the barrier.”

Vettel described the impact with the wall as “quite strong”.

“I think the TecPro in the wall did their job, the car did its job,” he said. “Of course after the impact the car was very damaged so that’s what also makes it quite difficult to reconstruct what was going on before the impact.”

The damaged caused by the crash is making it harder for Ferrari to work out what caused the initial failure.

“We are flat-out trying to understand,” said Vettel. “Obviously it would be a lot easier if there was a lot of run-off and the car didn’t hit anything right after because now you can imagine due to the hit it’s sustained damage.

“So we have to be very careful in understanding exactly what is the problem and that’s what everybody is looking at here at the track but also in Maranello.”

Although the team covered more mileage than any of their rivals over the first five days, Vettel said the time lost due to the crash is still a setback.

“We covered a lot of mileage last week. But surely the plan is always to fulfil your programme so we had more laps on the board than 40 this morning. So for sure it’s not ideal and we’re losing some time but right now it’s important to understand what exactly happened.

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2019 F1 season