Ferrari are 'completely fired up' to beat Mercedes in 2018 - Vettel

Sebastian Vettel insists that the work his Ferrari team did across 2017 in terms of closing the gap to rivals Mercedes was 'outstanding' and has claimed that the team are 'completely fired up' to push the title race all the way in the coming year.

Ferrari made massive improvements in speed last year, pushing Mercedes further than most expected, though reliability issues mid-season proved to be their downfall, allowing Lewis Hamilton to claim the crown.

Vettel however feels that lessons have been learned from the errors made, and that across the winter break the entire team is completely motivated to give Mercedes a real challenge in the coming year.

The German, who won five races in 2017, said: "The step that we have done in 2017 was incredible. The way the team has come out with a competitive car at the beginning, the way we have improved both chassis and engine, on all fronts I think it has been outstanding.

"We have been close for most of the year, not close enough when it mattered, but that's what happened. From that we made our conclusions, we learned our lessons. So I believe that those will help us. We are completely fired up."

Vettel also added that the frustration of finding themselves in a good position in both the driver and constructor championship mid-season, only to end with nothing to show for it, is a motivating factor pushing another big step up in quality.

He stated: ""Obviously it was bitter but now we look forward to in 2018. Everybody will be pushing very hard over the winter. I think we have what we need. It all starts again in 2018, so let's see. We had two or three races that turned out to be very costly, for different reasons and, they've [Mercedes] been very, very strong, very consistent.

In the end we weren't good enough to take it to the last race and take the championship. So, I think we know what we need to do. There are lessons that were obvious, some were a bit more hidden but I'm sure we'll dig deep enough and try to find all of them."