Four-time Formula 1 champion Sebastian Vettel has been impressed by the speed and performance of the new breed of cars.
The German got his first proper taste of 2017 machinery on Monday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and continued to impress on day three of the test.
Vettel ended the day in an impressive second place, just two-tenths behind pacesetter Valtteri Bottas who set his time on the ultra-soft tyres while Vettel set his on softs.
The former Red Bull and Toro Rosso driver confirmed the new cars are better in ‘every area’.
“Braking is better, cornering is better, you’ve got much more grip, and then also in low-speed, where the downforce effect is less, you have the wider tyres, so more grip from them.
“It works pretty much like an aspirin, it fixes everything!”
Ferrari has performed well in testing thus far and Vettel believes the team focusing on itself rather than reigning champions Mercedes is crucial.
“There’s a lot of work ahead of us, the team is pushing very hard,” he said.
“I think we had a quiet winter where we really tried to focus on what’s important, and same here [in testing], we try to do our job – the list that we have to do is very long.
“We’ve had a good three days. It could have been better, but we did a decent number of laps.
“I didn’t really pay much attention to what the others were doing.
“At the end of the day everybody is looking at one lap time, but it’s much more important what happens throughout the day, so it’s very difficult to read.”
Kimi Raikkonen will be back in the car in tomorrow’s wet-weather test which will see the cars use the intermediate and wet tyres for the first time.
