Vettel: There's more potential in Ferrari car

Sebastian Vettel

Vettel: There's more potential in Ferrari car

Seb thinks there could be more to come.

Paul Macdonald

Tuesday 28 May 2019 11:22

Sebastian Vettel was encouraged by Ferrari's performance in the Monaco Grand Prix and feels that if the team refines their race strategy that the car has more to offer, as they look to close the gap to Mercedes.

Vettel earned a surprise second position to break Mercedes' six-race one-two streak, though helped in no small part by a five-second penalty for Max Verstappen following a collision with Valtteri Bottas in the pit lane.

Ferrari's performances so far this season have been hugely underwhelming and that looked set to continue when Charles Leclerc was eliminated in Q1 and then retired from the race itself.

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But Vettel's second spot has given the German reasons to be positive, and when a journalist in the post-race press conference referenced Mattia Binotto's comment that Ferrari are required to 'give Sebastian a better car', he said that the team need to come together.

"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.

"I’m part of the team so I’m flattered by what he’s trying to say but 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, 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."

Vettel added that despite thinking that the car has more to give, he has not been comfortable enough up to this point to push the car to its limit.

He said: "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 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."