Sebastian Vettel believes all six drivers from Formula 1’s top three teams could have a shot at this year’s championship.
The season started with all expectations flying out the window as Valtteri Bottas claimed a dominant victory for Mercedes while pre-season favourites Ferrari slumped to fourth and fifth.
At the same time, Red Bull emerged as viable contenders with Max Verstappen qualifying fourth and passing Vettel for the final place on the podium.
“I can only speak for myself, but I think there are three large teams again and all those teams have enough potential to take the world title this year,” the German told the Express looking ahead.
“We look at ourselves first and we are hopefully faster than everyone else, but I think it will be very tight.”
With Bottas winning and Charles Leclerc expected to grow into the season, the only question mark in the top six is Pierre Gasly, who could only finish 11th in Australia after a strategy error saw him knocked out in Q1.
“I think that Pierre had a little bad luck,” Vettel commented. “He did no worse than Max Verstappen seen over the entire weekend.
“I think that all six drivers of the top teams will get involved in the fight. Hopefully, we can continue to fight as long as possible to make the decision later in the season.”
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To do that, however, Ferrari must overcome their woes in Melbourne, but Leclerc doesn’t think that will be a problem.
“At the end, I think it’s not like we arrived with a very different car to testing,” the Monegasque said to RaceFans. “It’s not like Mercedes (who) has come with a very different car.
“So I think the car is there. In the past, it has been seen quite a lot of times that it’s a strange track, and it’s not always very representative of the real performance of all the cars here in Australia, so I’m confident we can come back.
“How much? We don’t know, and this we’ll only know in Bahrain. But yes, I’m confident.”