Vibration slowed Schumacher

Michael Schumacher blamed an unknown vibration for his poor performance in qualifying for the Korean Grand Prix. Schumacher carried out one run in the second qualifying session, but his lap was only good enough for ninth place. When the rest of the field carried out its second runs Schumacher was knocked down to 11th and out of qualifying, and he said that while the strategy was the right one, the vibrations prevented him setting a competitive lap time.

"To start with the positives of today's qualifying, I have saved two fresh sets of option tires which is always helpful," Schumacher said. "On the other hand, it was obviously a pity what happened. Everything went normally in Q1, and from what you can expect of the tires under normal circumstances, it was absolutely justified to go for just one run in Q2. But unfortunately I could feel that something was not right when leaving the pits as I had vibrations straight away."

"All that was left for us to do was hope that the gap would be big enough to remain in the top ten but that turned out not to be the case. We will now have a close look into what exactly happened and fully concentrate on trying to make up some positions in the race tomorrow."