Ferrari’s 2018 Formula 1 car offers better development potential than last year’s chassis and should help them stay competitive in the title fight, Sebastian Vettel believes.
Vettel arrives at this weekend’s British Grand Prix with a one-point lead in the championship over Lewis Hamilton. Last year Vettel led at the halfway stage in the season but was overhauled by Hamilton in the second half of the season.
However he believes Ferrari’s SF71H will not fall behind in the development fight.“I think in ’17 we had a better car from the start,” said Vettel. “Obviously we had great results in the beginning of the year.
“But I think this year’s car has more potential. Here and there maybe we didn’t get everything out of the car. But I have a feeling we can keep developing this car.”
Ferrari’s championship hopes were hit by a series of setbacks including crashes and reliability problems in the Singapore, Malaysian and Japanese Grands Prix last year. However Vettel also believes their underlying performance was weaker than Mercedes towards the end of the year.
“In the end of last season the car wasn’t strong enough to fight Mercedes,” he said. “That’s where I think we lost most of the points.
“I don’t know how it will be at the end this year. If we have something to fight with then I’m quite confident we can have a good year. But I think time will tell, I’m not too worried, not looking forward too much, and going race by race.”
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Chaitanya
6th July 2018, 9:09
Joke of the day.
Kim Philby (@philby)
6th July 2018, 9:27
For the sake of the sport and the spirit of competion hopefully they will. As a Ferrari i don’t really about those I just want Ferrari to win.
Kim Philby (@philby)
6th July 2018, 9:28
*As a Ferrari Fan.
BasCB (@bascb)
6th July 2018, 20:10
I think that the bit that let them down most last year (and yes, they were almost as quick as Mercedes for part of the year but not quite there overall) was the part between the seat and the steering wheel. A few too many costly incidents where they could have had a solid haul of points.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
6th July 2018, 22:12
That would be something new for Ferrari.
In any case, mid season they are matching others just fine. Even leading Hamilton by a tiny margin…
But I don’t think we could call Mercedes slower than Ferrari yet.