Vettel: We need to understand what’s going wrong

Vettel was forced to pull off and park on the pit straight after he was hit by an electrical issue that prevented him from running for the balance of the session while the crew worked on the car.

“We had an electrical problem, obviously that’s part of the electrical bits on the car," said Vettel. "We don’t know yet entirely but we’ll have to see.

“I’m sure we can fix it but we want to understand what happened.

“It's a bit of a shame because we're lacking a couple of laps, especially in the long runs and race trim, to see how competitive we are.

"I think that Kimi did homework for the team, so not too bad. Also I think here we know roughly what to expect. I think we can still learn a lot from what other people did.”

Regarding the Italian team's prospects for the weekend, Vettel added: “Difficult to say. The balance isn't yet where I wanted it to be, but I think we can improve.

"Naturally I think the circuit should come our way. It was quite slippery this morning, I spun the first two laps. I didn't spin this afternoon, that's already a massive improvement!

“I felt happier as the day continued. Obviously we did some stuff for qualifying. For the race we're lacking a bit information, but it shouldn't be too bad.

"So let's see tomorrow morning, we still have another practice session.”

Raikkonen laments "difficult day"

While Vettel finished FP2 second behind pacesetter Lewis Hamilton despite his problems, Raikkonen ended up fourth, some 1.2s adrift of the reigning champion.

“It was a more difficult day, nothing seems to have worked as clear as I wanted," said the Finn. "It’s one of the days struggling making the tyres work and making sense out of the setup.

"Apart from that, everything was more or less OK. It’s a new engine, it’s very difficult to say the difference.

"There is a difference in different places in different days, so it works well. We wouldn’t use any new parts if we didn’t think it was good."