Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Ferrari closer to Mercedes than it appears - Vettel

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Sebastian Vettel is confident Ferrari is closer in performance to Mercedes than it appeared at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Following Vettel's victory in Malaysia, Ferrari pushed Mercedes close in China and Bahrain but Sunday's race at the Circuit de Catalunya saw Nico Rosberg 45 seconds clear of his fellow German. Vettel says the gap needs investigating but he doesn't feel it is a true representation of how competitive Ferrari really is.

"Obviously, if you look at the gap in the race it was the biggest gap we’ve had so far so your conclusion might be that it’s not so good, but I think we’re quite confident that we’re going in the right direction," Vettel said. "For some reason, I don’t think we were so competitive here which explains the gap.

"Now we’re obviously trying to understand and find the reasons. Either this track didn’t suit us or the conditions really suited Mercedes. I think it’s more likely to be one of the two, because if you take the average, obviously we’ve been closer in the last couple of races, so I’m looking forward to Monaco and looking forward to being closer to them again."

And Vettel says his confidence comes from the feeling Ferrari has improved its car thanks to the updates brought to Barcelona.

"For us I’m pretty confident we will get closer again pretty soon, so hopefully in two weeks’ time it’s a different picture. I think we have done a step forward as a team in terms of performance. Obviously it doesn’t really show here but I’m quite confident that in the next couple of race we’ll be stepping up our game again and I’m looking forward to that."

Click here for Sunday'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.