Ferrari left trailing but Vettel confident that car has more speed

Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari endured a difficult Friday in Melbourne as he finished FP2 more than half a second behind pacesetter Lewis Hamilton – after many observers had pegged the Italian team as favorites in the light of its form in Barcelona testing.

Vettel blamed track time lost due to problems in FP1 for not getting up to speed as early as he would have liked to, and insisted that the team will make progress on Saturday.

“The balance wasn’t yet where I want it to be, so I think we can still do a decent step forward,” said the German. “Still a lot of work ahead of us. I think we’ve always been realistic. We’ll see where it takes us tomorrow, when everybody is showing what they can do. Today it’s still difficult to say, but it doesn’t really matter for us.

“I think we had a mixed day. This morning was not so good, we had some small issues that caught me out. But the team is doing well. I think we have a lot of things that we can improve. As I said the balance is not so good yet, but I’m sure we can work on that overnight.”

Asked if Friday’s outcome represents the true picture he said: “I hope not, but we’ll see. Today is not really that important, in the end. It is very important. but not if you look at the final standings, one lap time only. We had some small troubles this morning that cost us some lap time, so it took a bit longer to get into the groove. Overall, I think we can still improve. The car still doesn’t yet feel as good as it should and it can.”

Vettel denied that he had been playing down Ferrari’s chances over the winter.

“Not really, but I don’t know, people from outside make up their own opinion, no matter what you tell them. That’s how it is. Obviously we’ve been very happy in testing, times looked good, but it doesn’t mean anything. You come here and that’s when it matters. I think we were realistic about that. As I said today it was OK, I think the car feels good. It hasn’t change much, it was only two weeks ago that we got out of the car. It’s good to be back here, and as I said, we can still improve.”

Asked to compare the current situation with the same race last year, he said: “You have to be fair as well, one year ago it didn’t look that bad. We came here with high expectations and we weren’t that far off, but we weren’t able to win the race. They’re completely different years, so I don’t think there’s much point comparing them.”