In an interview with ESPN F1 today, Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel has Sebastian Vettel has warned against writing off Williams even if they didn’t perform as well as expected today in Hungary.
Today when lap times can count for very little, Vettel was the closest challenger to the Mercedes drivers. Vettel brought his RB10 home in third place, 0.629s off the pace.
In his interview with ESPN F1 today, Vettel has stated that he is wary of predicting that Red Bull are leading the battle to be the best of the rest, saying others teams especially Williams could still make inroads. Vettel said the following:-
‘I think we could be a little bit closer this weekend here, but we have seen a lot of people make big steps from Friday to Saturday – in particular Williams – so we have to be careful. I think people gain more from Friday to Saturday than we do. We hope we have a big enough step to keep the pace of today.’
It is clear from what Vettel has said today that many teams such as Williams have demonstrated that they can improve their performance overnight and that he feels they could once again have a reasonable weekend. At the moment, I would have to agree with Vettel that other teams such as Williams tend to make more leaps in performance compared to Red Bull. But all he can do is to ensure that they also try and build on what they have achieved today.
Further on in his interview, Vettel has weighed in on improvements from Renault, stating that while they had little impact last weekend in Germany but he is hoping for better from the engine supplier this weekend. Vettel added the following:-
‘In general Renault and Total are pushing really, really hard. Last weekend we were expecting an upgrade which just didn’t bring the advantage we were looking for.
‘Tomorrow we should have a bit of a step up between Friday and Saturday, which is normal all the way down the pit lane, with people running fresher engines and able to use a little bit more power. We will have to wait and see where we are tomorrow.’
As we would expect Renault and Total will be working together in partnership in order to try and improve their performances and also the performances of their customers such as Red Bull. Even though they brought an upgrade to Germany, Vettel is not happy with how they performed.
As Vettel says, many teams and drivers will be improving their set ups overnight and will want to see a leap in terms of performance and pace tomorrow. But as he says himself, all Vettel and Red Bull can do to ensure that they analyse the data from today and look to build on what they have managed to achieve today in preparation for the rest of the weekend ahead.
Question is; will Vettel and Red Bull be able to continue and improve further on the pace and performance they have shown in the Practice sessions today? We will have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.
