Vettel: Ferrari have 'good and healthy platform' for 2018

Sebastian Vettel has insisted that he is happy with Ferrari's preparations for the 2018 Formula One campaign and believes that the Scuderia have a 'good and healthy' platform to perform well next season and try and topple the dominance of Mercedes in the team championship.

In 2016, Ferrari failed to claim a single flap in the campaign which was their second winless season in two years at that time. However, 2017 proved a much better year for the Prancing Horse as Vettel won five races, with the last coming in the second-last Grand Prix in Brazil.

The German driver enjoyed an excellent first-half of the season and won four GPs, but reliability issues and a few poor personal performances allowed Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes to eventually swoop in and win the championship.

Despite that disappointment in the end, Vettel thinks the strides forward made by Ferrari last season bode well for 2018.

"It's always the same game, obviously the regulations stay roughly the same," said Vettel.

"I think we have a good and healthy platform to build on at the beginning of the year, so I hope that continues.

"What we have to do is take that final step, it's always that final step that it is the hardest.

"[But there's] a lot of work going on already over the last couple of months to make the car faster, put more power into the engine and then we'll see where we are."

Vettel believes that Ferrari recognises their strength and weaknesses better than before, and this would be important in any future successes gained.

"There were races we could have done better, there were races where I could have done better, but there were also races where we should have done a lot worse and we didn't," the four-time world champion continued.

"Obviously some of the races get highlighted and we get a lot of praise for it, other times you get a lot of the opposite but that's part of the game.

"I think the most important [thing] for us drivers and the team is to understand where we've been strong and weak."