Red Bull were struggling to replicate the dominance of previous seasons on Saturday after two-time reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel failed to make the third qualifying round for the Chinese Grand Prix and will start 11th.

This time last year the 24-year-old German had won both the opening races and he hardly looked back after that as he and his Red Bull car obliterated the opposition.

But after two years of superiority, Vettel finds himself in the unfamiliar position of playing catch-up already, as his patchy season reached a new low in Shanghai.

“I was pretty happy with the car in qualifying,” he insisted, despite seeing fellow German Nico Rosberg storm to pole position in his Mercedes for Sunday’s race with a time that was almost one second quicker than Vettel’s.

“I think we made a step forward compared to the morning (practice). In the morning we had quite a bit of oversteer.”

Team-mate Mark Webber was seventh fastest and admitted it had been a far from ideal qualifying session.

“The Q2 (second qualifying) lap wasn’t bad, but I didn’t get the Q3 lap together as I would have liked,” he said.

“It’s a bit all over the place with pulling a lap time together on the soft tyre, but I would have liked to have finished a row further up.”

Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal, was more forthright, labelling it “an ultimately disappointing qualifying”.