Ferrari still closing on Mercedes – Vettel

Sebastian Vettel claims Ferrari has been consistently closing the gap to Mercedes since the season's kick-off, and hopes the trend can extend into this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix.

Coming off a dismal and winless 2014 campaign, the revered Italian squad entered this year with the moderate hope of winning two races. Yet it has immediately emerged as the defending champions' closest challenger.

Vettel only needed a couple of Grand Prix to secure his maiden Ferrari victory in Malaysia. Although he has yet to pay another visit to the top step of the podium since Sepang, the four-time world champion thinks his squad has been making steady progress in its efforts to reel in Mercedes.

“I think you have to see that it is natural that from track to track it might vary a bit but we’ve already done an incredible job,” Vettel said. “If you look at winter testing and where we are now, I think we consider ourselves to be quite a bit closer.

“Ideally we always try to fight for the win. I know that we have a strong package this year, a strong car, so if everything goes normal then we should be a little bit further up again, especially on Saturday this weekend.”

With Ferrari introducing its first engine upgrade at Montreal two weeks ago, Vettel hopes the Maranello-based outfit can carry the momentum forward and challenge the championship leaders over the rest of the season.

“Obviously it’s not that easy to make the gap smaller and smaller because Mercedes is a strong team and obviously they are improving as well.

“They introduced a new spec of engine in Canada so they’re also making progress but our target for sure, is to make bigger progress to finally close the gap.

“So for sure, we are hoping that in the second part of the season, we are starting to get closer – closer than we are now.”

Vettel currently occupies third position in the Drivers' standings 43 points adrift of table-topper Lewis Hamilton, while second-placed Ferrari trails Mercedes by 105 points in the Constructors' race.

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