Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel: Challenge to catch Mercedes 'huge'

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Sebastian Vettel has described the challenge Ferrari faces to try and catch Mercedes this season as "huge".

While Lewis Hamilton dominated the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Vettel's win in Malaysia a fortnight later ignited hopes of a championship battle between the two teams. While Vettel has only failed to finish on the podium once this season - in Bahrain where Kimi Raikkonen threatened to win - Mercedes has had the measure of Ferrari since Vettel's win and he admits it will be tough to completely erase the gap.

"In general we are here to fight," Vettel said. "It is clear that we always want to get the maximum but you have to see that Mercedes is still the strongest team and the challenge to catch them is huge. We are trying to make everything possible and trying to close the gap. Hopefully we can be a little bit closer this weekend."

And Vettel says Ferrari will need to be flexible in terms of its strategy options to make sure it maximises its opportunities in Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix.

"Strategy can be quite important here, if you look at the last couple of years, so I think we need to start on the right foot and get into the rhythm and it is very important and similar to Monaco, you use a lot of kerbs, it is important to hit the brakes at the right time, turning in at the right time.

"It is a circuit where timing is pretty crucial. Hopefully we will have that right from the start and have a good weekend."

Click here for technical analysis of the braking challenge at the Canadian 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.