Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Gap to Mercedes 'bad news' - Vettel

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Sebastian Vettel says it is "bad news" for Ferrari to see a similar performance gap to Mercedes during Friday practice for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton held an advantage of almost a second in the opening practice session, with Vettel and team-mate Kimi Raikkonen third and fourth quickest. While Vettel improved to second place and cut the gap to 0.4s in the second session, he admits it's disappointing not to be even closer.

"I think we can improve the car," Vettel said. "I think the gap was about four tenths but a bit more if you look at the whole day. I haven’t looked at the long runs but the gap is still there – that’s the bad news for us."

With both Mercedes drivers struggling with the track conditions, Vettel was less concerned about the lack of grip on Friday.

"Overall it’s fairly straightforward, the medium is the faster tyre. But pretty slippery today for all the cars, you saw that everyone was a little bit all over the place. Grip seems to be very low, but nothing abnormal.

"We’ve seen that across many years now – when we come from the winter, usually the track in the summer is a bit slow.

"It always helps when cars go round. I think everyone completed a lot of laps today so it will improve. Largely conditions will remain the same, they’re saying it’s a bit cooler on Sunday so maybe that helps everyone."

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Spanish Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.