Vettel against ‘now or never’ F1 title attack

Sebastian Vettel is refusing an all-out attack for the final five races of this season as he looks to rescue his Formula 1 world title hopes with a 50-point deficit to Lewis Hamilton.

The Ferrari driver must now rely on additional setbacks for Mercedes and Hamilton if he is to secure a fifth F1 world title this year with the British driver mathematically able to finish second behind Vettel in all the remaining races and still wrap up the crown.

But Vettel has ruled out an aggressive ‘now or never approach’ despite the drivers’ championship situation and is only aiming to maximise his performance without focusing on his F1 world title rival.

“I don’t like the now or never approach, I don’t think there’s much sense in that,” Vettel said. “The secret has been not to count [points].

“We attack every weekend and every weekend is different, tracks are different and circumstances are different.

“I’m very happy to be here, I love this track, it is my favourite track in the world so I want to enjoy it and not spoil it by starting to count on this that are against me. I’ll not focus on the things that are against me.”

While Vettel agrees Ferrari has been able to be consistently competitive against Mercedes in 2018 he refutes the assertion he has a dominant car which has been losing out in strategy calls and racing situations.

Vettel feels last week’s Russian Grand Prix is a clear case of two teams evenly matched but with Mercedes qualifying ahead of Ferrari it was able to dictate the race pace due to the difficulties fof the current generation of F1 cars to follow each other closely.

“A race like last weekend in a way where they could play with us in the race and they had some more pace,” he said. “But there were other races in the season where we didn’t have the pace that they had. But we’ve always been very close, in many races close enough to have a good fight.

“We hope that we have the same performance here and hopefully we are closer in qualifying which matters to place the car well to have a strong race and show that pace because once you are behind, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, we don’t have a lot of wheel-to-wheel racing.

“It is not easy to follow close and if you are racing for the same tenths, even if the car were easier to overtake, it wouldn’t be that straightforward because ultimately you go as quick as the guys around you. Hopefully we are a bit closer.”