Sebastian Vettel admits he and Ferrari could have reacted better to the changing conditions during Q3 in qualifying for the Belgian GP.

The Scuderia appeared on course to get at least one car on the front row and likely pole as they were embroiled in a close-fought battle with Lewis Hamilton in the dry at Spa-Francorchamps.

However, in the final top 10 shoot-out, everything changed as a rain shower hit before any driver to could complete a flying lap and forced a mad scramble to switch to intermediate tyres.

"It was confusion," Vettel conceded. "It was just not as calm as I think it could have been.

"I guess everybody had in these conditions, swapping tyres, there was a little bit of miscommunication of where to start in the pit lane.

"It was a bit chaotic and not great from a management point of view."

Then, as was the case in Germany and Hungary in the damp conditions, it was Hamilton and Mercedes who had the clear advantage in performance.

"I don't feel we put everything together in the last lap," he said. "We didn't time it great. It didn't feel as if I got everything out for various reasons, therefore it was a bit of a scrappy session.

"It wasn't a nice ending to a great qualifying up to that point. It's great fun but obviously not very rewarding when you know you could have done a bit better."

Even so, to secure second on the grid alongside his main championship rival was at least a result of sorts for the 31-year-old.

"In these conditions, it can be anything. You might as well take second from where we are," he acknowledged. "You saw also the others not putting enough fuel for the end, so it can be a lot worse."

One such driver who was under-fuelled was teammate Kimi Raikkonen, with the Finn having to stop early and settle for sixth on the grid.

"Honestly, I don't know what we did, apart from obviously not the best thing," Kimi lamented. "We need to see what happened obviously. There was time left, but we needed to pit. Far from ideal.

“I knew how much fuel we had, but honestly I didn’t know we didn’t have time to refuel and go out again.

"I guess we should have stopped when we changed tyres and put more fuel and then we manage to do more laps, but I don’t know the reasons why."