Vettel praises Raikkonen help for P2

Sebastian Vettel paid tribute to teammate Kimi Raikkonen for helping him secure second place on the grid for the Belgian Grand Prix.

Raikkonen was a provisional second after the first runs in Q3 but had been complaining of vibrations and made a mistake on his final attempt. With Vettel behind him on track and still trying to complete his final lap, Raikkonen gave his Ferrari teammate a tow toward the final chicane, resulting in Vettel jumping up to second place with the fastest final sector.

When it was put to him that his lap was pretty special, Vettel replied: "Not just on my behalf, I think I had a little bit of help from a friend.

"Kimi here obviously had to abort his lap and he was very generous in giving me a nice tow in the last sector, which I think got me like two-tenths – that helped and made it a little bit comfortable with Valtteri [Bottas], looking at the result.

"In Q1 I really happy, the car was amazing. In Q2, the main job was to get through and then Q3, first lap, I was missing a little bit the feel for the front. The second run in Q3 was better in that regard, so I was very happy with the last lap and as I said obviously a bit of a help.

"It was tricky then getting into the last corner, knowing you arrive so much faster with the tow and braking is never easy. It's easy to miss it, the last corner, but I managed to get it right and across the line, so that was very useful. The pace has been good this weekend I think less for one lap but more so for long runs, so let's see what we can do tomorrow."

Vettel believes Raikkonen made the decision to help out himself rather than receiving an instruction from the team.

"As far as I understand, he had a mistake on his last flying lap, so it wasn't planned. He wanted to obviously finish that lap but I guess when he did that mistake and where we were positioned, he just cruised back to the pits and I guess the team didn't even tell him anything, I think he just saw the red car in the mirror and thought 'I'll hand him a tow, which is quite nice.

"It was obviously a big help, quite useful for me, but it wasn't planned. I saw some other teams playing around with tows previously in qualifying but it's usually one of those things you can't really plan so you tend to stay away from them. To answer your question it was very spontaneous."