Sebastian Vettel claims he “doesn’t see why” Ferrari can’t challenge strongly at the Monaco Grand Prix.
The Scuderia has been pretty open about their issues since the last race in Spain, with the team focused on optimising the Pirelli tyres and improving their low-speed handling.
“I think the main conclusion happened across the weekend when we found ourselves as not competitive enough,” Vettel explained on Wednesday.
“Obviously we tried to explore with a bit more time certain setups and so on, and I think we made a little progress, but overall the gap was quite big at the last race.”
The four-time champion himself has also already played down expectations for Monte Carlo.
However, he didn’t rule out a completely wasted weekend for Ferrari before hitting the track for practice on Thursday.
“For here, it is difficult to predict because it is such a different place and unique place. You would assume that this type of corner would not really suit us given the last couple of races,” he began.
“But I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a good race. I think historically the last races [in Monaco] have been quite good for us, so I am fairly optimistic and am looking forward to getting back on track.”
Asked specifically about the Pirelli problems, the main theme in Vettel’s comments was a struggle for consistency.
“I think it is a combination of things,” he was quoted by Crash.net.
“Our car is not quick enough and that is something we have learned more than once and this might trigger that you don’t find yourself in the right place of the tyres.
“The window, unfortunately, is so small and extremely small to hit, and you can sometimes see big differences in lap time across the same driver or inside the same team, which sometimes you struggle to understand.
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“Obviously there is a lot of engineering power and science to try to overcome all these random scenarios, but there may be people understanding a little bit more than we do currently.
“But as I said, with the tyres, as with the car, we try to understand more and more, which will hopefully help us ideally tomorrow, but also in the next weeks for sure going forward.”
