Sebastian Vettel happy with Ferrari’s progress, not content with race simulation

Sebastian Vettel is geared up for the Bahrain Grand Prix after his VSC triggered win in Melbourne, despite Ferrari not being the fastest at Albert Park.

Vettel had a few apprehensions with the SF71H in Melbourne but feels that Ferrari has rectified the ‘balance’ issues of the car, one’s that affected him during the weekend in Melbourne.

The issue particularly was with the front-end balance of the car, but Vettel feels that the amount of work that has gone into the car after Melbourne holds it in good stead for Bahrain.

“In Australia we were a little bit behind and also in terms of feeling not yet happy,” Vettel said.

“We tried some stuff today mostly to fix the front end because it hasn’t been very strong in Australia and it’s got a bit better.

“Let’s see where we are tomorrow. I think we can still improve for both short and long run.” he added.

Ferrari ended FP2 with Raikkonen and Vettel leading the charts, sending out a strong warning to all F1 teams.

Ferrari were 0.5s faster than Mercedes  with respect to one-lap pace, however, Vettel wasn’t quite content with Ferrari’s race simulation.

“My long run was OK, I think it should have been a bit stronger. But as I said we tried different things with balance with the car, we tried to get a read.

“It looks like we were a bit quicker than the rest but it depends on the programme. At this point I wouldn’t draw on any conclusions.

“We focus on ourselves and the set-up mostly and try to get a bit better feel which at times was good, at other times was not yet there so still some stuff to do.” Vettel said.

The German was also confident about Ferrari’s chances against the high-flying Mercedes, saying that Ferrari is probably closer to Mercedes this time round.

“We always hope so, yes. I think we need to wait obviously because I don’t know what happened today. It looked like we were a bit quicker than the rest but it depends a bit on the programme.” Vettel said.