Mercedes’ brought an upgraded power unit in Paul Ricard and fresh new bits in Red Bull Ring to get ahead of their rivals, but Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel is not quite worried looking at their performances yet.
After the debacle in the Canadian Grand Prix, Mercedes finally had its upgrades for the French Grand Prix and now the Austrian Grand Prix to get ahead of their rivals Ferrari and Red Bull Racing.
It seems to have worked as both the drivers are talking positive about the gains made which is also being showcased through the results on track. Lewis Hamilton took the pole and the victory in France, while Valtteri Bottas has pole in Austria.
The Finn actually managed to eke out a lap with a 0.334s advantage over Vettel – even Hamilton was 0.315s up on his rival. On a short lap like in Red Bull Ring, it is still a massive difference in time between the two teams.
But Vettel is not overly worried, even though he admits that Mercedes must have had the expected results from the upgrades brought. However, he adds that Ferrari has its own schedule as well to adhere to which could play into their hands.
Especially as Ferrari now knows the kind of upgrades Mercedes has, the Italian manufacturer can bring its own around that to get ahead of its rivals. “Obviously, they have the exact numbers of what they expected and what was delivered,” he started.
“They obviously had some new parts here again, I think, so for us it was largely the same as last weekend but for sure, we are having our own schedule in terms of new bits and I think we are pushing as hard as we can but as I said, we also need to make sure that what we bring to the car is making it faster so it’s a constant challenge.
“For now, I think, the last two qualifying sessions Mercedes seemed to have the edge a little bit. It can turn around, the next two, who knows, so I think we need to look at ourselves?
“There’s always something you can learn from other people and what they put on the car, but that’s not just for Mercedes, that’s for all the teams. As I said, for tomorrow I’m not worried anyways, but less of the opinion that we are behind.
“I think we are more of a match in race pace.” Vettel dropped 14 points behind Hamilton in France and is already on the backfoot in Austria with an added three-place penalty due to impeding Renault’s Carlos Sainz in Q2.
He will start from sixth in the race, not only behind the Mercedes and his teammate Kimi Raikkonen but will have the ever dangerous Red Bull’s Max Verstappen along with Haas’ Romain Grosjean to tackle in the early part of the race.