Sebastian Vettel remains confident Ferrari will be in the battle for victory at the Singapore Grand Prix, despite what he called a “mixed” Friday at Marina Bay.
On a weekend where the Scuderia is expected to have the edge on main rivals Mercedes, it was Red Bull who stole the show, with Daniel Ricciardo leading both sessions, whereas the Italian team hasn’t appeared quite on the pace.
The German was second in the afternoon but would slip to 11th under the lights as traffic in the form of Marcus Ericsson disrupted his first flying lap on the Ultrasoft tyres while an error at Turn 10 would cause him to abandon the second.
Even on the first lap, however, it appeared the Ferrari was slower, as Vettel was half a second down on pacesetter Ricciardo at the second sector point and speaking afterwards, the four-time winner of this race admitted he wasn’t happy.
“I thought it was a mixed day, a mixed session,” he said. “Obviously not ideal that I lost the car on my second attempt and overall I’m not yet happy. [I’m] missing a little bit of balance and a bit of confidence.
“I think we tried a couple of things, not sure they’re the right things to do and now we look at what we can do tomorrow. I think we need a bit of time but overall it’s clear that both of us weren’t happy today and we need to improve and get a solution.”
And Sebastian is sure Ferrari can find that solution as he didn’t seem too concerned by the pace of his former team.
“Our priority is to go as fast as we can and we’ll see where that takes us,” he stated. “It’s not the first Friday they (Red Bull) have been competitive. We’ll see. I’m pretty sure we’ll be close on Saturday.”
While events distorted the picture regarding Vettel, the same cannot be said for teammate Kimi Raikkonen, as the Finn didn’t appear to have any problems yet was two seconds slower in ninth in the second session.
“It wasn’t ideal in the afternoon but overall not a lot of things made sense,” he claimed. “First of all, we need to make sure we have everything where we want and have a good set-up.
“Obviously the tyres are always the key and it’s not any different here than other places. We tried some things and obviously, we have some work to be done.”
