Sebastian Vettel is of the view that Ferrari has to pay attention to smaller details so as to catch a far away Mercedes.
The pre-season cry was mostly in favour of Ferrari as it finally looked like an equal battle between the Italian manufacturer and Mercedes. It turned out to be a different story after the first six races in the 2019 F1 season – all of which Mercedes has won.
In fact, they had a record-breaking five consecutive 1-2 finishes which was only broken in Monaco with Vettel in second in between Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. They could have easily got the sixth one but for some misfortune in Bottas’ case.
While Ferrari seem to have a powerful engine and a straightline advantage, the Italian manufacturer loses out hugely in corners, where Mercedes has a huge advantage. In addition, the Ferrari drivers are struggling to find the right window with the tyres too.
On top of that, both Vettel and Charles Leclerc along with the team as a whole, have made silly mistakes which has put them quite behind Mercedes and in Red Bull Racing territory. Vettel, though, still believes that Ferrari has a good car underneath.
The German reckons that the team has to work into smaller details and extract that performance to be catch a far away Mercedes. “I’m part of the team so I don’t put myself above,” started Vettel, when asked by media after Monaco.
“I’ve had some difficult moments this year where I’m fighting the car, I’m not really entering yet to the level where I feel a lot more comfortable and I feel comfortable to squeeze out more performance from the car.
“But I think it’s linked to the fact that we struggle to put our car in the right window. Once it is there, it is feeling better and you’re able to build up on that but it doesn’t happen very often but it’s a combination of things.
“I think first we are lacking overall performance and that overall performance would help us probably to put the tyres more often in the window they would like to be in. I think it’s not a secret, by now, after six races that these tyres this year seem a bit more critical to get exactly into that window.
“I think it’s not been the easiest and straightforward ride so far but I feel that there’s more potential in this car, there’s more potential in the team and as I said, I’m part of the team. I think we need to stick together, we need to work hard.
“And even if it would be nice to flip a coin and turn things around, probably for everybody’s sake except those two guys [Mercedes], it’s not going to happen overnight. We need to work hard and pay a lot of attention to small things, to details in order to get closer and once we are matched I think we can put a lot more pressure on them.
“I will have a lot closer races but currently we are sitting too far away, behind Mercedes and probably a match on average with Red Bull is not where we want to be. I don’t think the car is as bad as it looks. We need to focus on trying to get the car short-term more in the right tyre window.
“Looking forward for the next three, four, five races, obviously make sure we improve the car, put more grip onto the car so that we can go faster, simple as that. But that guy seems to hide fairly well. I don’t know exactly where he is right now.
“So if you find him, or if you’ve got his number, that grip guy, but we’ve been looking for him for a while. I don’t think there are any secrets we will be able to unveil. As usual, attention to detail and a lot hard work is the only way to get us up.”
It will hard though for Ferrari to counter-attack as they are 118 points behind Mercedes already and even with plenty of races to go, the German team have the upperhand and can play with points at ease while Ferrari will have to pray for no mistakes.
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