Vettel unsure where Ferrari stands against Mercedes, Red Bull
Sebastian Vettel concedes&🌺nbsp;it is “hard to say” where Ferrari stacks up against Formula 1 rivals Merceꩵdes and Red Bull after Hungarian Grand Prix practice.
Ferrari headed to the Hungaroring expecting the circuit’s twisty nature to play to the strengths of Mercede🔴s’ 2019 challenger, which appeared to be the case as🌱 Lewis Hamilton topped the opening practice session.
But♎ Vettel ended FP1 just 0.166s adrift in third place in what was an encouraging session for Ferrari, before rain disrupted running in an unrepresentative FP2.
“It was not bad,” Vettel said.
Sebastian Vettel concedes it is “hard to say” where Ferr♏ari stacks up against Formula 1 rivals Mercedes and Red Bull afte🅺r Hungarian Grand Prix practice.
Ferrari headed to the Hungaroring expectiꦯng the circuit’s twisty nature to play to the strengths of Mercedes’ 2019 challenger, which appeared to be the case as Lewis Hamilton topped the opening practice session.
But Vettel ended FP1 just 0.166s adrift in third place in what wa♈s an encouraging session for Ferrari, before rain disrupted running in an unrepresentative FP2.
“It was not bad,” Vettel said.
“I think we have some room🐈 to improve, struggling a bit to get everything out of the car on that particular lap.
𓂃“Hard to say where we are compared to the others, we will see tomorrow.
“I had plenty of margin. I think it’s more important in these conditions tha🍒t I get the answer for the car rather than the ultimate laptime.”
Asked if h🅰e is hoping for conditions to be wet for Ferrari to be competitive, Vettel replied: “No I think in both conditions we should be 🧜thereabouts.
“How cloꦛse, we will see. I think Mercedes look very stro💟ng out of the box straight away.”
Lecler꧅c struggled to match his teammate’s pace🌜 throughout Friday as he ended up nearly a second off the pace in dry conditions during FP1. The Monegasque reported balance issues with his car and is hoping for rain to boost the team’s chances.
“On my side I'm not veꦓry happy at the moment in terms of balance of the car, so I need to work quite a lot on that,” Leclerc expla♎ined.
“I think in the wet, I was in better shape. Overall we are strugglꦰing a little bit with the downforce level that we have.
“It's a track where we need a lot of downforce, we knew it would be a difficult track for us, so we need to work and try to improve for tomorrow.
“It will be all about trying to anticipate what will happen on the Sunday,” he added. “I think everything will be q𝓡uite different on Sunday, a lot warmer than it was today, no rain, so yeah, we will see Sunday.
“Obviously it was all about the la🌃ps before in the condition💝s which were changing quite a lot. We'll see tomorrow. Hopefully it will rain.”
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