Sebastian Vettel has conceded both he and Ferrari have areas to work on over the winter after seeing another championship bid fall short in 2018.
The German was expected to have a season-long battle with Lewis Hamilton and was even considered the favourite at the summer break with the Scuderia appearing to have the performance advantage.
As it was, the Mercedes driver maintained the momentum, which began with victory after Vettel’s crash at Hockenheim, to comfortably secure the title by 88 points, his biggest margin in any of his five championships to date.
“I don’t think I ever had any problems raising my hand if I made a mistake,” Seb, who won his last race at Spa was quoted by RaceFans in reflection.
“Knowing as well, as a racing driver, how quickly things can go wrong, how things could have gone differently this year, I think I have to review a couple of things.
“Certainly, here and there, looking back I haven’t been at the top of my game so I look at myself first. I think I can be better than I was at times this year.
“Having said that though, I think we also had a lot of races where we got everything out of the car and the package and I felt that I did everything I could but that’s how it goes, that’s sometimes why you love racing and sometimes why you hate racing.
“For now I need a bit of time just to shut things down.”
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Ferrari also faltered though, with an upgrade package brought to the Singapore Grand Prix proving a step back in performance when the team undid those changes in Austin and won the race with Kimi Raikkonen.
“It’s a big operation, so a lot of small things need to come together but I think everybody’s there,” Vettel continued. “We’ve mentioned it many times.
“Obviously we lost our path a little bit halfway through the year where things didn’t come together. I think we’ve understood what went wrong, we obviously try to do a better job in the future, that was one key thing.
“On the other hand I think we had a lot of lessons, it was a tough year in general. I think the team is strong and the team has potential but surely it was a lot of things that happened inside the team.
“[The death of chairman Sergio Marchionne in July] obviously had an impact and was tough”, he added.
“I think it’s up to us to look into every single detail and make sure we come out as a stronger group, enabling us to build a stronger package for next year and for the future.”