Sebastian Vettel has little confidence in this year's Ferrari

Ferrari

Vettel has little confidence in this year's Ferrari

The four-time F1 champion could only finish 10th in Austria

Ian Parkes

Sunday 5 July 2020 21:23

Sebastian Vettel has revealed he has little confidence in this season's Ferrari following a miserable start to the new Formula 1 campaign.

After qualifying a lowly 11th for the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix, the four-time F1 champion could only improve one place in the race at the Red Bull Ring on a day when there were nine retirements.

Vettel's race was also marred by a spin following an adventurous lunge into turn two a third of the way into the race on McLaren's Carlos Sainz that resulted in him dropping to the back of the pack at that stage.

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As Vettel stated immediately afterwards, he was "happy that I spun only once" in a car that is lacking in power and also suffers from too much drag.

"I didn't have the best race. I didn't have great confidence in the car," was Vettel's stark assessment.

"It's good in a way we have another race here next week. We will try and confirm this is not the way the car normally behaves.

"I was quite happy in testing, and based on the car last year it seems a little bit better in cornering, and the balance, for half of the weekend was good, for the other half on my side, wasn't good.

"So that's a big question mark right now to try and see and understand whether there's something wrong because as I've mentioned, I didn't have confidence in the car to find great consistency, in terms of laps, and great speed, in terms of pace."

Explaining his incident with Sainz, Vettel added: "I tried to stay in touch with the two cars [team-mate Charles Leclerc and Sainz] in front.

"Charles was trying to defend his position, and Carlos, in the last second, was turning in fairly aggressively to line up for the next straight, and then I was a bit locked in.

"I didn't have a place to go, so to avoid contact I tried to cut the kerb as much as I could, I locked the rears and I basically spun around.

"Once I was committing to get as close as possible for the next straight, I then suddenly found myself with having no place to go, so it was a shame I lost the car there.

"But as I mentioned I was struggling generally with the car throughout the race, not feeling any confidence under braking, so it probably didn't help I didn't make the most accurate judgment on my side."

Before you go...

Mercedes feared Hamilton and Bottas wouldn't finish the race

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