“It looks like all the midfield has caught up”- Sebastian Vettel challenges Red Bull and Mercedes

“It looks like all the midfield has caught up”- Sebastian Vettel claims that this year’s f1 season will be an intense shuffle in team rankings.

After a long stint with Ferrari, Sebastian Vettel has now joined forces with Aston Martin, which is easily enjoying the midfield status, as last year its predecessor Racing Point finished P4.

With recent investments and other midfield teams bolstering themselves, Vettel feels that the midfield has a lot to offer against the mighty Mercedes and Red Bull.

“It will be difficult to filter all the impressions because the tyres are different, the cars have changed, and I’m sure that lots of the experiences I’ve made other people have made as well, so it’s all relative,” Vettel said after the final day of testing in Bahrain.

“In terms of performance, as far as what I’ve seen, it looks to be very close. That would be good if it’s like that, so yeah, Red Bull looks very strong, Mercedes – anything other than being at the top would be a surprise for everyone.”

“But it looks like all the midfield has caught up. But it depends on how the car feels; if the car feels fine, but it’s relative. The car can feel fantastic, but if it’s too slow, it’s painful, and if it feels horrible but it’s faster than everyone else’s, then you accept it. We’ll find out more when we go racing.”

Not comfortable with the car.

While he challenges the top hierarchy, Vettel and his team were the ones with the least mileage during the pre-season testing, owing to several technical problems throughout the event.

“Well, now there will be a race, and I’m looking forward to going racing; testing is not that exciting, but if everything is new, then we would have liked to have more days.”

“Also, with the little hiccups that we had, but it is what it is, so as I said, it won’t be like testing; it will still be racing, but we will have to learn a lot,” Vettel added.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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