Sauber stand-in Antonio Giovinazzi apologised to his team after a heavy crash in qualifying left it with an overnight repair job on his car ahead of Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix.
Giovinazzi, who is once again deputising for the unfit Pascal Wehrlein, was looking to build on his impressive debut in Australia despite limited running in Shanghi. In the closing stages of Q1, when he was sat just above the drop zone in 15th and pushing to move further clear, the Italian lost the rear of his car at the final corner and spun violently into the inside wall.
The subsequent crash prompted yellow flags which prevented anyone else from improving on their times, but left the car with significant damage to the front and rear of the car, as well as three of its four corners. Giovinazzi pointed the finger of blame at himself and said it was part of the learning process of Formula One.
"It was OK until the last corner in the last lap," Giovinazzi said. "I think we had good pace, I was already P15 and improving my lap time in the end, but then I made a mistake, I touched my rear tyres on the grass which maybe was still wet from yesterday, I lost the rear and yeah, it was tough, of course I'm disappointed and I want to say sorry to the team.
"Tomorrow is another day, I don't have much experience so this can happen, important tomorrow that we will be back and show a good result in the race."
After missing all of Friday practice in Australia, Giovinazzi completed just four laps yesterday due to the weather-related disruptions to Friday practice. Though he pointed to the lack of track time as a factor he refused to make excuses for the crash and vowed he will "never" make the same mistake again.
"It was very frustrating, I was already on a good lap on the second stint and the last stint I was pushing really hard to find the limit, and only 200m before the finish line, what can I say? It's very disappointing.
"I had just one hour, to be honest it was the same for everyone because everyone started from FP3, but to have of course FP1 or FP2 would be good, but it's what it is and I did a mistake. I hope from this mistake it will never happen again."