Vettel: Mercedes not to blame for Aston Martin's F1 test woes

Sebastian Vettel has refused to pin the blame on Mercedes for Aston Martin’s reliability troubles during Formula 1 pre-season testing in Bahrain.

The four-time world champion’s preparations to get up to speed with his new team ahead of the upcoming campaign were hampered by a plethora of reliability issues that limited his running.

Vettel ultimately ended the three-day test at the bottom of the mileage charts having completed just 117 laps altogether as Aston Martin encountered a gearbox failure, a suspected turbo issue, and an electrical problem across the three days.

But the German stressed that finding the root cause of the issues in time for the first race in two weeks is more important than pointing the finger of blame.

“I don’t quite agree,” Vettel replied when asked if the fault for Aston Martin’s issues fell on Mercedes. “It’s in our car.

"It’s true that the power unit is the Mercedes power unit and it’s true the gearbox is supplied by Mercedes but it’s still installed into our car so there’s a lot of components that mixed at some stage.

“I don’t know to be honest right now where the source of the problem was this afternoon, where exactly it was, so we need to get to the bottom of it.

“Ultimately it will be more on one side or the other side but it doesn’t matter. It needs to be fixed and addressed.

“We will work together because whatever you acquire from outside you still need to put in our car and make it work.”

Vettel admitted the setbacks had left him on the back foot and around “100 laps short” of the running he would have hoped to have completed going into the new season. But unlike a decade ago, the vastly experienced 33-year-old said he is not entering “panic” mode.

“I'm not too preoccupied,” he explained. “Maybe it's the age, maybe it's the experience, but probably 10 years ago I would finally panic now.

"But then again, if I were to panic now would it help? Probably not. We are just trying to do our things and use the time now we have.

"We still got some running, And for me it was super, super useful the laps [on the last day].

"So, it could be worse. It could be better, but it could be worse. So I think it's about remaining calm, doing one thing at a time and moving forward when it's time to."