Ferrari reveal reason behind Vettel's poor Brazil performance

Sebastian Vettel struggled to the chequered flag and a sixth-place finish having started on the front row of the grid. Vettel slipped down the order in the early stages of the race but Ferrari has revealed that his issues were down to a sensor issue on the car.

Despite starting on what was arguably the favourable tyre strategy being on the soft tyres for the opening stint, Ferrari struggled to fire up the tyres and hadn't expected the red-walled supersofts on the Mercedes and Red Bull cars to last as long as they did, and was left unable to capitalise on their tyre gamble.

However, in reality, their issues had started long before lights out when the team discovered a sensor issue on Vettel's car that left him with an ill-handling car.

"Right from the formation lap, we became aware of a problem with a sensor on Seb's car,'' Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene told media afterwards.

"This meant that, for the whole race, he had to run different settings to those we would have normally used and that made the car difficult to drive.''

The German was but a bit-part player in the race, falling to the back of the field of front-runners. He was left to reflect on another disappointing race in his 2018 season.

"Well I tried everything but obviously in terms of the result, one, and one being bad,'' Vettel said.

"It's just a difficult afternoon. I don't think we were on top of the car today, the tyres. I don't think it was an advantage to be honest starting with the soft, the super-softs lasted a longer time, longer than I think we all expected. But that's how it is.''