Vettel assesses Ferrari ‘losses’ to Mercedes

Sebastian Vettel says Ferrari’s ‘main losses’ to Mercedes is being unable to match its pace through high-speed corners which is compounded by the circuit layout at the Red Bull Ring.

The Ferrari driver has qualified in third place behind a Mercedes front-row lockout with Valtteri Bottas on pole ahead of Lewis Hamilton, to create a similar story from France last weekend but with the Mercedes duo in reverse order, which has left the German driver to concede his team is struggling to match its rivals’ pace.

When quizzed on where Ferrari is missing out to Mercedes, Vettel feels the main area of weakness is high-speed corners having levelled its straight-line speed this season and has called on his team to find improvements to maintain its title fight.

“I think we need to look at ourselves, there are some things you can obviously learn from others and what they put on the car, that’s not just from Mercedes but for all of the teams,” Vettel said. “For tomorrow I’m less worried we are behind. We have more matching race pace so let’s see tomorrow.

“I don’t think there was enough pace in hand to be a threat today. It seems in qualifying, at least, we are a little bit behind right now. I think the tracks we went in the last two weeks are quite different so we need to make sure we keep pushing.

“On the straights they were able to carry the speed through the corners. I think that’s one of our main losses. I think the last two corners weren’t too bad but you could see it was very high speed, turn seven and turn nine. It’s close, we’re not talking about much, but obviously enough to get ahead.”