Sebastian Vettel says there’s still plenty of speed to be “unleashed” from the Ferrari after Bahrain Grand Prix practice.
The problems of Melbourne appeared a distant memory as the Italian team finished 1-2 in both sessions, holding a 0.6s advantage over Mercedes in the more representative evening conditions.
However, any assumption that it means Ferrari is back at the front, as was expected after testing, is certainly not been accepted by Vettel.
“No, no. It’s never enough, but we will probably find out tomorrow,” he said of the gap to Mercedes.
“To me, the result is one thing but we still need to work and I think we can improve. The feeling I had inside the car, for sure it was better than Australia but there’s still more in the car.
“I think if we unleash that then we should be in good shape tomorrow and hopefully, we can be a lot closer and put Mercedes under pressure.”
Vettel did admit, however, there could be another reason for the gap in performance.
“Obviously today the result was good, but we were probably on a different strategy to other people so I wouldn’t put too much attention on that,” he explained.
“I think for tomorrow we still need to improve, especially Mercedes looks very fast.
‘[I’m] also keeping an eye on the Red Bulls, they looked very strong in the corners today. I think it will be very close. I hope it will be very close.”
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- Hamilton: Ferrari pace ‘completely different’ to Melbourne
- Ferrari’s pace in Australia the result of a fundamental issue, says Red Bull’s Marko
The four-time F1 champion’s caution was also matched by team boss Mattia Binotto.
“The others will be very strong tomorrow,” he predicted. “You may see the GPS data, the speed on the straight, we were certainly pushing different engine modes compared to what the others were doing today.
“So I’m expecting a very tough battle tomorrow.”