Vettel surprised to be starting third

The German suffered a hydraulic problem in practice one, and then spun on Friday afternoon in P2. He then encountered a brake issue on Saturday morning during P3, which confined his running to just 12 laps.

"It was a difficult two days up to qualifying," he said. "Yesterday I had only the pleasure of one lap in P1, and the second I did a mistake so we could not do our programme.

"This morning we had a failure, which cost us some track time, so far from ideal, but we looked at the data and prepared for qualifying and I think we succeeded.

"I am surprised how close the feeling in the car is with all the regulations changes coming here, having last year in mind, so it is pretty impressive what all the people have done, not just in front, but the whole midfield.

"We were at some point fearing not making it to Q2, so now we are third, second row, and looking forward to tomorrow, but points we get tomorrow."

Only the Brawn drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello outqualified last year's Italian Grand Prix winner, but Vettel urged his Red Bull team to stay grounded despite the potential of the new RB4.

"Overall I am a bit surprised that we managed to do so well in qualifying, we were struggling yesterday as we had anything but a good day," he said, "I had the failure in P1, and in P2 I went off, this morning I was trying to get some mileage, here you need to set up the car, and as a driver to get some rhythm and feel for the track.

"So we did more laps on the computer than on the circuit, but it seemed to help. It has been a tough winter but I think we put a good car on the track and it seems to work so I am pleased with the result.

"It is obvious that we are the power after Brawn, right now, but we have to keep the feet on the ground, it is a long, long season, this is quite a fast start. You get the points tomorrow so the most important thing is tomorrow."