Ted Kravitz was brutally blanked by Frederic Vasseur live on air despite running down the Qatar Grand Prix paddock to try to secure an interview with the Ferrari chief. The awkward moment happend during his Ted’s Notebook programme after qualifying had concluded on Saturday night.

Vasseur was walking in the paddock with deputy team principal Jerome D’Ambrosio when Kravitz clocked him while presenting his progamme live. He then said into his microphone: “Actually, we thought we were going to get an interview opportunity with him and that didn’t happen. So, should I run after him? Where is he going, to the garage? Why don’t I waddle after and pretend I was just sauntering past him.”

But it seemed Vasseur may well have also detected Kravitz’s presence and his intentions as the Frenchman seemed to quicken his stride as he approached the entrance to the Ferrari garage. The Sky Sports presenter ran to catch up and asked the team boss: “Better than yesterday, Fred?” referring to their performance in qualifying.

Kravitz repeated the question twice more, but got no response of note from the Ferrari chief. The presenter then continued: “Well, he shrugged. Wow, I really didn’t get a response. In fact, I got a worse response than I thought I was going to get! Fred is not happy because they are not at the front, let’s put it that way.”

He certainly wouldn’t have been happy with the result of qualifying. Lewis Hamilton suffered another early exit, qualifying just 18th on track and only rising one place on the starting grid for Sunday’s race because of a penalty for Gabriel Bortoleto, who had been 14th quickest in the Sauber but lost five places as a result of his collision with Lance Stroll in Las Vegas last weekend.

Things were no better for Charles Leclerc, who spent the whole session fighting his less-than-compliant car. He managed to steer it into Q3 but things deteriorated from there, the Monegasque suffering a violent spin on his first flying lap of that final part of qualifying before his last effort was slower than everyone else still driving, meaning he will start the Grand Prix from 10th.

Both drivers were adamant that the car had improved compared to how it had been to drive in the Sprint race a few hours earlier, but clearly not enough to make much of an impression. Hamilton said: “The car felt a lot better, it just didn’t reflect that in the times. Honestly, the car felt a lot better than it was in the rest of the weekend. We were looking okay, and then we just didn’t get the last lap.”

And Leclerc added: “I agree with Lewis’ feeling. The car feels quite okay, doesn’t feel that much off the pace, but then when you look at the timings, we are very, very, very far [off]. It’s just the performance of the car at the moment, we are not where we want to be. I changed quite a bit on the car since yesterday, but I couldn’t extract any more.”