Sebastian Vettel has conceded Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes have had it “too easy” as the Briton marches towards matching Juan Manuel Fangio as a five-time champion.
Since the German Grand Prix back in July, only Vettel’s triumph at Spa has stopped Hamilton claiming a clean sweep of races and now he needs to outscore Sebastian by eight points at the next race in Austin to secure a fourth title in five seasons.
Though Mercedes has made progress in that time, a number of errors both by Ferrari and Vettel have gained the most attention and the 31-year-old knows that all too well.
“There is still a chance, but the last couple of races we made it a bit too easy for them,” he said, following another difficult weekend in Japan which saw mistakes both in qualifying and the race.
“Also credit to them, they executed well and that’s the name of the game, but we need to look after ourselves and do our bit the next couple of races and then we’ll see.
“Surely it didn’t help we finished sixth [at Suzuka] and they [Hamilton & Mercedes] won.”
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Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene was critical of his team, describing strategy and other errors as “unacceptable” while acknowledging they could be blamed on a “young team” that lacks an “old hand”.
“It’s easy to be pragmatic,” he continued to Sky Sports. “Concerning the future races, I know the situation looks impossible but our job sometimes is to challenge the impossible and this is what we are going to do, we try to do for the future four races.”
Though Hamilton has called for greater “respect” to the shown towards Vettel, one outspoken F1 figure couldn’t help but take a dig at the German.
“He [Vettel] could write a book about his season called ‘How to lose a world championship’,” 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve said.
“The key difference between him and Hamilton this year is that Lewis first thinks about the situation before making an aggressive attack.”
As for the Scuderia, he added: “It’s not easy to understand Ferrari, and not just because they lost some races. After some mistakes, they never returned to the right path and that’s impossible to understand from the outside.”