Vettel admits to “first time” failure

Sebastian Vettel says this is the first time he has ever failed to extract the maximum from a car in his entire racing career, but insists he is doing all he can to get to the bottom of his problems before he leaves Ferrari at the end of the season.

Former champion Vettel has been outclassed by his younger team-mate Charles Leclerc this season and blamed himself rather than his SF-1000 machine for his failure to finish higher than sixth all season.

He said: “So far in my racing life, I’ve always been able to extract the maximum. This year seems a bit different. Clearly I’m missing something and I’m trying everything I can to get on top of it.

“I don’t think it’s down to the way the car is handling, I think you always have to adapt. I think that’s true in go-karts all the way to Formula 1. That’s something that normally has never been a problem.

“Just like any car throughout my career, I’m trying everything I can to go as fast as I can, but currently I’m not able to get the same out of the car as Charles is. I’m looking with the engineers to try and understand and continue to work on it.”

Leclerc scored two podiums at the start of the season, in Austria and at Silverstone, but the team’s form slumped in the middle of the year and their pace has only just started to improve again following a series of upgrades.

Despite the improvements, Vettel failed to make it into the top 10 shoot-out for the ninth consecutive time at last weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and finished a lowly 12th while Leclerc started seventh and finished fifth.

Asked what the difference between the two drivers is, team boss Mattia Binotto said: “Looking at the data, I don’t think there is a key difference. I think at the end it’s very small differences.

“It’s always a sum of hundredths per corner, so it’s very little. It’s a matter of feeling the grip, of extracting the potential. It’s our task, our duty, to help him, to support him in ways that he can deliver.”

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