On a key weekend for his title bid, Sebastian Vettel is taking confidence from the dry pace of his Ferrari into the remainder of the Japanese Grand Prix, after leading Practice 1 on Friday.
With rain expected and duly arriving in the afternoon, most teams elected to complete low fuel and race simulations early when conditions were favourable with the German holding a two-tenths advantage over championship rival Lewis Hamilton by the end.
That is despite Mercedes already anticipating a much stronger weekend than in Malaysia a week ago based on their own experience on the first day of action at Suzuka.
“I think it was a decent morning obviously we tried to do a lot of things but it was good to run and get a feel,” the four-time world champion commented. “The car was behaving well right from the start so it looks like everything is on plan.
“This afternoon was expected to be wet. We would’ve loved to run a little bit more but I think we know the situation with the tyres so you never know how much running is right because you don’t want to burn the tyres but overall that’s how it is and it’s the same for everyone.”
In the rain, Vettel also brushed aside any concerns the wet is a weakness for the Scuderia believing it comes down to simply producing the necessary performance.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s wet or not. I think the rain is supposed to stay around for quite a while,” he said of the forecast for Saturday. “If it’s wet then we need to improve obviously the last time it was wet it was Monza and we were not very strong.
“I think Malaysia was a bit better but I hope that we learned our lessons and the car should be competitive. It’s quick so it’s up to us to put it in the right place. Whatever the weather will bring I hope we can show that the car is strong.”
Asked if Mercedes do have the better car in those conditions, he added: “I don’t think it matters. I think we have a good chance and let’s see what the weather is tomorrow and we’ll go from there.
“I feel the car was strong this morning, this afternoon we didn’t run so it should be fine.”
