Sebastian Vettel said he was certain his Ferrari team could battle with Mercedes for the title after a solid race at the Australian Grand Prix. Vettel drove for the initial 35 laps just for his trusts are fixed when Mercedes outmaneuvered them on methodology. He said: “We were a lot closer. Last year this was one of our worst circuits so there are plenty of positives. The team seems in good shape. We know we can up our game and we want to put pressure on these guys.”
Vettel declined to censure Ferrari for their choice to stay with super-delicate tires at a re-begin after the race was quit taking after an enormous accident including McLaren’s Fernando Alonso and Haas’ Esteban Gutierrez. That implied Vettel needed to make a second pit stop, while Mercedes changed to a one-stop system utilizing the medium tires.
That permitted Nico Rosberg to vault from second to first and Lewis Hamilton to climb from seventh to complete second. Vettel said: “You can argue that the red flag didn’t help us but equally, you know, one time it plays into your favor, the other time it catches you out a bit. We went the aggressive route – maybe with hindsight we could have done something else but I’m not willing to blame anything or anyone. We are a team, we win as a team and I think today we won 15 points.”
He added: “You have to be a bit more aggressive and it could be right or it could be wrong.”But at the end we were pushing like hell and Sebastian was to have a chance to be able to overtake Hamilton, which was in our strategy.
“If you want to look at the glass not half-empty, we were there, this is the news. Of course you can’t be happy after this but this is racing.”
