Vettel warns Hamilton over Schumacher pursuit

Sebastian Vettel believes that Michael Schumacher's records for Formula 1 drivers' titles and grand prix wins remain "quite far away", with rival Lewis Hamilton having set his sights on eclipsing the German great after winning his fifth championship in 2018.

Hamilton has already overtaken Schumacher's pole record and heads into the Brazilian GP with 81 Saturday successes to his name.

The Briton is 20 race wins short of Schumacher, with two years left on his Mercedes deal – Hamilton is set to get close to Schumacher if he continues winning GPs at the rate he has in the V6 Hybrid era.

Lid game = Strong ???? #BrazilGP ???????? pic.twitter.com/z5hNV3LbXI — Mercedes-AMG F1 (@MercedesAMGF1) November 9, 2018

With much discussion after his title coronation last time out surrounding Hamilton's standing among the all-time greats, Vettel says making comparisons is tough.

"Yes, you can compare, but every time is different," he said. "I think comparing maybe with the generation of Michael is probably easier but comparing back is more difficult.

"I don't know, I think it depends in the next years how competitive we will be, how competitive Lewis will be. It's impossible to predict.

"I still think that Michael's numbers are quite far away."

Vettel says his own ambitions of reaching five titles will be undimmed in 2019.

"You never know whether you will get another chance," Vettel said.

"You never know what next year brings. Obviously I'll work very hard for it and I'm confident it will come but ultimately I don't know. You can't predict.

Hello São Paulo ???? track walk! #Seb5 #BrazilGP ???????? pic.twitter.com/l3wkTi0Hgh — Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) November 8, 2018

"I know my job and I know my role and I don't think it will change next year in terms of what I have to do.

"Certainly there is a lot of stuff that happened this year and we will be able to, as a team and as an individual, be able to learn from it and take it forward and raise the bar next year.

"Obviously along the way something went wrong and we need to learn from it, something went wrong and we didn't go and develop in the right direction.

"So clearly we missed something and not because something was on purpose by default set wrong. So it's up to us to find a fix for it and make sure it doesn't happen again, but it's not so simple to find and fix it as it sounds."

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