Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Monaco bringing Ferrari closer to Mercedes - Vettel

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Sebastian Vettel says Ferrari is closer to Mercedes due to the nature of the track in Monaco.

Thursday's two practice sessions saw Lewis Hamilton top the times, but Vettel was fourth quickest in FP1 - the only fully dry session - and just 0.4s slower than the championship leader. Vettel says he is not surprised to be able to get closer to Mercedes on the street circuit but hopes it's enough to challenge on Sunday.

“We will hopefully find out on Sunday, until then it’s obviously difficult to predict," Vettel said. "I think we should be closer again here, obviously it’s the nature of the track, everyone’s a little closer so I don’t think you can take Monaco as a reference but for sure I think that we are closer.”

And Vettel says his car is not yet to his liking because he didn't get enough running in FP2 before rain interrupted the session.

“It is what it is, it’s the same for everyone. Obviously when it rains and we know that the forecast is better for the next days we don’t tend to run. But I think the car felt OK, we didn't get a lot of running this morning and one run this afternoon but it seems to be OK. Obviously we have to wait and see on Saturday.”

Click here for a look at the technical updates brought by all the teams at the start of the European season

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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.