Vettel pleased despite no top ten

The Toro Rosso driver was hit by hydraulics problems in both of yesterday's session, meaning he managed a total of nine laps on the day.

Despite that, Vettel missed Q3 by just a hundredth of a second and will start tomorrow's race from 11th.

"A shame to miss out on Q3 by one hundredth, but we expected it to be tight," said Vettel. "We can be happy though, especially given I only managed nine laps yesterday. It means we did a good job today.

"Now we can do what we like in terms of fuel load for the race and hopefully find a good strategy. I've yet to do a long run this weekend but I think we can find a good compromise between qualifying and race pace and we have a good set-up on the car."

Sebastien Bourdais qualified in 14th after he continue to struggle for grip with the softer tyre.

"I struggled with the Option tyre as it gave me no grip and I was sliding around more and had no feel for the car," he said. "I was very happy in a well balanced car earlier on but after that I'm not really sure what happened.

"I am disappointed, because even if Q3 would have been hard to reach, I could not match my Q1 time in Q2."