Sebastian Vettel has played down the impact of his practice crash on his performance during Monaco Grand Prix qualifying.

The German would suffer the classic Sainte Devote incident in Saturday's final practice as he locked up on the approach and couldn't stop before hitting the barriers.

Having missed out on track time, Vettel then didn't pose much of a threat for pole and would end up fourth on the grid for Sunday's race.

“I think this morning has nothing to do with that [qualifying],” he said. “So, I don’t want to shift the blame.

"In the afternoon, certainly the first two laps you need to sort of rebuild and get into the rhythm, but then again I’ve been many times around here so that’s not a problem."

Instead, the four-time Formula 1 champion blamed the same problem which had plagued the Scuderia all season.

“We struggled to get the tyres to work and then you just don’t get the feel that you want," he admitted. "You need especially the front tyres but for us, they didn’t work today."

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With Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas sweeping the front row, it raises the possibility of Mercedes scoring a sixth one-two in Monte Carlo.

And Vettel was pretty blunt with his assessment of Ferrari's situation.

“We need to dig deeper. We are, already, trying to understand as much as we can. Sometimes it works," he claimed.

“This morning Charles was quite happy and the few laps I had as well but this afternoon wasn’t quite like that so yeah. For now, it is what it is, we need to accept it even if we don’t want to. But we go from there.”