Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel eyes Rosberg in to Turn 1

Sebastian Vettel says he is targeting beating Nico Rosberg in to Turn 1 to give himself the best chance of winning the Monaco Grand Prix.

Despite being fastest in FP3, Vettel was unable to match the two Mercedes drivers in qualifying and will start third behind Rosberg and pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton. However, with Vettel starting on the inside of the track he says his aim is to get ahead of Rosberg off the line due to the difficult nature of overtaking in Monaco.

“Everything is possible for tomorrow,” Vettel said. “We know that Monaco is difficult to pass, but there’s 78 laps to do. The start will be important. I start on the inside which obviously gives me the possibility with a good start to split them and then we’ll see what happens. In terms of strategy it’s not statistically the most exciting race but if you get some rain … I don’t know the forecast for tomorrow.”

And Vettel is confident he will be closer to the Mercedes pace in race trim than he was in qualifying.

“Today was significantly cooler. Probably it’s true that with a little bit higher temperatures we would have been a bit closer. As it stands today we were quite far away again but I think tomorrow we should be able to get a bit closer to them.”

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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.