Sebastian Vettel qualified more than six tenths behind Lewis Hamilton in Singapore, but says the gap does not “reflect the true performance”.

“Obviously, the gap if you look at it is a surprise but I don’t think it reflects the true performance,” Vettel said after qualifying.

“Obviously for us it did not go as smooth as it should have been.”

The German was disappointed at their apparent lack of performance in the final part of qualifying.

“I think we should have done better. We had the ingredients and we should have put it together,” the four-time World Champion continued.

“You know, P3 is not a disaster so I am not completely upset but for sure we wanted to get pole.

“It was definitely there to grasp but the way qualifying happened, obviously, it wasn’t anymore.

“That is disappointing for now but tomorrow we turn the page and go racing.”

Vettel admitted that they had issues on their out laps in trying to get the tyres warmed up.

However, the major issue seemed to be the proximity of traffic, but the German did not lay blame on just that.

“It is never ideal if you have a mini race on the out lap but there was a lot of cars always around so yeah,” Vettel said.

“I mean, you can’t blame it on that.

“We had two laps and both were not good enough so it is not what I wanted and not what we wanted today.”