"It happened yesterday and today - that's a weakness and we need to stop it," says the German
Wednesday 13 July 2016 15:47, UK
A despondent Sebastian Vettel has called on Ferrari to put an end to their gearbox issues after he suffered yet another grid penalty at the British GP.
The German first reported a gearbox failure in Friday's opening practice session and in P3 he threw his hands up in the air in frustration after encountering the same problem down the main straight.
Saturday's problem resulted in a late replacement, meaning he drops five places to 11th for the the Silverstone race. It is Vettel's second-straight gearbox grid penalty and his third in five grands prix.
"It happened yesterday and today - that's a weakness and we need to stop it," Vettel said. "I think the other occasions it was more a consequence of things happening. The issue we had yesterday and today is something new and we need to fix it.
"We got caught out twice by the same problem. We didn't have it before, so it might be something to do with the track here - it happened in the same place, at the end of the lap onto the main straight. If it happens in the race, we don't finish."
The four-time world champion was, however, calm when questioned on whether Ferrari could see a repeat of the problem on Sunday.
"We took some precaution going into qualifying," he added. "We didn't see the problem in qualifying and we didn't see it on Kimi's car so I'm very confident we'll be fine tomorrow."
The Italian team have been plagued by reliability gremlins in 2016 and were even usurped as Mercedes' closest challengers by Red Bull at Silverstone, with Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo out-qualifying both Ferrari drivers.
Vettel put his provisional sixth place down to a mistake on his flying run while Kimi Raikkonen, who was fifth but 0.5 seconds adrift of Verstappen in third, said the SF16-H was "stuck" in the conditions.
"I kind of expected it to be a bit tricky here and that's how it turned out to be," the Finn admitted. "We don't have enough speed. In the windy conditions, it's just tricky for us.
"We are a bit stuck with certain things. With the set-up we have, we can change a lot but it will not help because there are certain issues where we struggle with the handling."
