Vettel expected to be closer to Mercedes

2015 Mexican Grand Prix

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Sebastian Vettel came within two-tenths of a second of beating Lewis Hamilton in qualifying but said he expected to do better.

“To be fair, when I woke up this morning and even after P3, I thought we would be a bit closer to the Mercedes than we actually were in qualifying,” said the Ferrari driver. “Unfortunately, they proved to be very strong.”

“They were doing two consecutive laps, they were not using all the energy in one lap, so we need to be careful as I think they will be very quick also tomorrow in the race. But we will try our best, we are here to fight, we have nothing to lose.”

Vettel told his team on the radio after qualifying he “tried everything” to improve on his final run. “I had to take more risk but it didn’t work. I was trying harder but I was just sliding a bit more.”

“I think there was another tenth, maybe, but two you’re already trying to be a bit greedy. I gave everything I had.”

Afterwards Vettel said he believes Ferrari will be closer to Mercedes in the race. “I hope that our race pace tomorrow is going to be as good as it looked yesterday,” he said, “obviously it is always difficult to know what other people are doing, but considering that we were on the harder tyre, on Friday we seemed to be very quick on the long runs.”

“I hope we can be quick tomorrow as well, and make the tyres last. I think this will be the key for the race because on paper it looks easy, but then, with all the sliding around from low grip surface, we’ve seen many people struggling to keep their tyres alive.”

2015 Mexican Grand Prix

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    6 comments on “Vettel expected to be closer to Mercedes”

    1. Vettel does prefer to accelerate as early as possible out of a corner, I think this green track probably isn’t suiting that particular preference, as no doubt as he accelerates earlier, the the car will tend to slide or understeer. However, we’ll see if he can get a mega start and you never know with the the battle between the Merc boys ahead, who have nothing to lose, could well see him going for a win.

      1. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
        31st October 2015, 22:50

        I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Mercs crash each other out at the start, or at least some sort of incident.

        1. Hmmm. If Lewis is smart he will remember that Rosberg has this tendency to over do it after Lewis has put an assertive move on him, usually resulting in a collision or at least something inelegant. So…. I reckon Lewis will hold back on the first corner, maybe lose a place or two, then fight back. And win. Crushing Rosberg even more!!!!!

      2. I think what suits Vettel here is that Ferrari is very good under braking and strong with traction. Ferrari main problems are bhp and high speed aero.

        1. Yeah, Vettel is very good with throttle application, and same with the brakes. So he must be pretty happy with Ferrari.

    2. I think it won’t be easy…

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