Sebastian Vettel isn’t ruling anything out when it comes to Ferrari’s potential at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Scuderia has arguably had the fastest car in Budapest over the past two years with the team claiming a one-two in 2017 and were only thwarted by a wet qualifying helping Mercedes last season.
This year, however, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the SF90H may be less-suited to the twisty Hungaroring but Vettel is taking a wait and see approach.
“I’m fairly open-minded,” Vettel said to reporters on Thursday. “I think we should be ok but maybe we don’t come here as favourites with the track characteristics being a bit different.”
However: “We maybe had the same thoughts on other places and turned out to do quite well,” Vettel added.
“We need to get our stuff together, we have some new bits and hopefully that will put us some performance and a good direction for the next races in the second half of the season.
“We see the tendency that we are faster on the straights compared to the others but we pay the price in the corners.
“So, I think we have a rather efficient car but we are lacking a bit of downforce, so these two things added together explain also the picture and why sometimes it’s up and why it’s down.”
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With the Hungarian GP the last before the summer break, Vettel took the chance to reflect on what has been a rollercoaster season for himself and Ferrari, and ultimately one that has fallen short of expectations.
“I feel we are making progress. I think Bahrain is an extreme where everything was working quite well and Charles was very competitive the whole weekend,” he commented.
“After that, we struggled a little bit to repeat for a while and then Canada came around the corner where it was a little more straightforward.
“Austria and Hockenheim, I think in terms of efficiency and being power-limited, we were able to make more of a difference than in other places but at the same time, as I said earlier, we were able to improve the car and we are going in the right direction.
“This one is exactly the opposite. Efficiency doesn’t matter and you just need downforce, so it will be interesting to see where we are.”
