Sebastian Vettel unhappy with his Belgian GP qualifying mistake

An unhappy Sebastian Vettel has blamed himself for the mistake which relegated the Ferrari driver to just eighth on the grid at Spa.

In a hefty blow to his already-slim world championship hopes, the German set only the ninth-fastest Q3 time after a critical mistake on his final lap in qualifying, although he gains one place on the grid owing to Romain Grosjean's penalty.

"It was disappointing," rued Vettel. "We only had one set of tyres left and then l lost too much time in the last corner which was very costly on a day like today.

"The lap was fine until the last corner when l went in too deep and had a very poor exit. That lost me quite a lot of time – about two tenths, not enough to go P3 but enough to be higher up than ninth. It was a costly mistake and I'm not happy."

Vettel won in Hungary a month ago but trails world championship leader Hamilton by 42 points in the standings. He faces a further points loss on Sunday in the wake of Hamilton's sixth consecutive pole but believes a damage-limitation drive onto the podium is still possible.

"We have made impressive progress and that makes me confident tomorrow – we will be quicker than some of the cars in front of us," added Vettel. "We should have good pace and anything can happen. There is some potential for a chaotic start but we have the whole race to make an improvement."

Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen once again suffered more qualifying misery, although the Finn was entirely blameless on this occasion with his Ferrari car breaking down midway through Q2 on a dismal day for the Scuderia outfit.

"The car was handling well and it was just bad timing," said Raikkonen. "We've just got to try our best tomorrow and see where we end up. But obviously it is not ideal."