While Ferrari has more speed to come, Sebastian Vettel concedes Mercedes are in touch after practice at the Italian Grand Prix.
The German finished third fastest on Friday as Lewis Hamilton split the two red cars despite setting his best time after a rain shower had dampened parts of the circuit.
That performance even surprised the Briton, who finished just 0.068s behind pacesetter Charles Leclerc, but Vettel insists he always anticipated a close fight.
“The others are quick, Mercedes are not sleeping. I don’t know which paper you had but we didn’t have the same paper then,” he told reporters.
However: “Around here with a bit more confidence there’s quite a bit to unleash,” the four-time champion stated.
“I think it was a bit of a messy session, I don’t think anybody got the perfect lap. I know that I can find more and there was more out there, we can work on the car.”
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A similar pattern has emerged from Belgium where Ferrari has the single-lap pace while Mercedes appear quicker over a race distance.
Asked what area he would focus on though, Vettel replied: “It’s always one lap because the race is just putting a lot of laps together!
“In general, you want to improve the car so the weakness you have on one lap is usually not as big as you have in the long run, but you try to obviously focus on what you can do to make the car faster overall.
“You can’t change the car anyway, there’s no qualifying and race set-ups anymore, we just want to make the car faster.”
