Sebastian Vettel feels Ferrari should have focused on, ‘on the day’ performance in the first half of 2019 F1 season to eke out the desired results.
In the latter half of the 2019 F1 season, Ferrari were a worthy competitor to Mercedes and Red Bull Racing, but in the former half, even though they seemed to have decent pace, they faltered against a near-perfect Mercedes in several grand prix.
Having had a good winter, Ferrari lost pace already in Australia but looked like themselves in Bahrain until the reliability issue. The team spent many of the early races attempting to pinpoint the issue, and improve their speed – a natural thing to do.
But in hindsight, Vettel feels that the team became too hung-up on the above rather than laying their focus on the race day performances, where mistakes were often made, which sunk their ship eventually in the fight against Mercedes for the F1 title.
“I think we spend the first half of the year trying to really understand where we are lacking performance together trying to really be precise finding answers, what the car is missing, and so on, trying a lot of things,” said Vettel to media including FormulaRapida.net.
“I think we could have focused more on the day performance. But it’s also part of the process. There is nothing huge [we have to change]. I feel that the way I was driving, I’ve had a couple of mistakes that I shouldn’t make and I have to be honest.
“So, obviously, in terms of approach, etc, there’s may be small things I can do.” Looking at the pace Ferrari had, certain mistakes during the weekends certainly let them down when Mercedes and even Red Bull were making none, whether driver and or team.
While some of the strategic decisions could be lamented, some of the ones Ferrari undertook were simply in the unlucky category, when a similar thing worked in favour of their rivals. The assessment from Vettel here seems apt, considering Ferrari’s loss.
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The article was co-written by Duncan Leahy