Sebastian Vettel believes Ferrari can put "a lot of pressure" on Mercedes after topping Friday practice for the Austrian Grand Prix.
In a close FP2 session, Vettel set the fastest time by just 0.011s from Nico Rosberg, while Lewis Hamilton didn't set a supersoft tyre time and finished in fifth place. With the result also marking the first time Mercedes has been beaten in FP2 this season, when asked how close Ferrari is to its rivals, Vettel replied: "Difficult to say.
"Usually they are always able to make a step overnight. Hopefully we can stick with them and put a lot of pressure on them tomorrow."
Vettel's day was not without problems, however, as he completed just four laps in FP1 and was then halted before his long run in the afternoon session with a gearbox problem.
"We had an issue with the gearbox, some of the sensors switched into alert mode and we slowed down. We will have a close look, we don’t know yet what’s the problem but it seems unrelated from this morning.
"It’s a circuit where it’s important to have a rhythm, it’s a short lap so you need to get into the rhythm and it helps the more laps you do. Unfortunately we couldn’t do as much as we wanted but that’s what it is and now we have to go from there and see what happens tomorrow and especially on Sunday."
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