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Vettel downplays Hamilton's suggestion that Ferrari is 2017 favorite
Sebastian Vettel has downplayed Lewis Hamilton’s claim that Ferrari should regarded as the favorite heading into the 2017 season – despite the German setting the best time of the week in Thursday morning’s session at Barcelona.
Vettel set consistently fast times in the morning, although observers noted that he was backing off in the final sector across the line, and thus his overall true lap times should have been even better.
Vettel was keen to hand the favorite status back to Mercedes.
“I think if we can be fighting for the podium in Melbourne it would be great,” said Vettel. “But that’s far, far away. I think obviously in terms of time it’s not that far away, but we still have a lot to learn, a lot to do. I think we are starting to grow together more and more. It’s not a surprise, if you win three World Championships in a row as a team, then it’s clear who is the favorite, rule changes are not. I think they have good people and a working team, so they are the ones to beat.
“Right now it doesn’t matter if we are the fastest here, you gain no points for that. I think people look at the time sheet, at the end of the day of course it’s important to be somewhere up there, but there’s nothing to win from that. Our target is obviously to go through our program, go through our stuff, we’re a little bit behind but we’re making progress, the car is making sense, the numbers are making sense, Let’s see where we can be.”
He conceded that the test has gone well thus far.
“I would say not bad, I think we had a decent amount of days, spent quite some time on the track. We would love to do more laps, but we still have one and a half days to go, obviously lost some time yesterday, I had a little off this morning that cost us a little bit of time. Overall I think we are reasonably happy.
“But for sure the benchmark is very high that Mercedes is setting for the last couple of years, and also this test again, starting with this year. I think we know that we have to improve, and on the other hand we’re still early days in this generation of cars, so we’ll see where we are in a couple of weeks.”
Asked if he was backing off at the end of the lap, he said: “I think we’re trying to do our program. Obviously sometimes you go a bit faster, sometimes a bit slower. But overall I think we are still a little bit behind, the amount of laps we’re not entirely happy. So far the car has proven reliable.
“The first feeling is OK. Obviously the step from last year, you cannot compare, because obviously there’s a massive step forward. It’s fun to drive, the cars are faster, I think it’s the same for all of us. We still have room for improvement. Obviously Melbourne is only a couple of weeks away. The guys are pushing very hard here, and pushing very hard in the factory. We need to improve.”
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