Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel keen to put 'a lot of pressure' on Mercedes

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."

Click here for F1i's exclusive interview with Daniel Ricciardo

Click here for the F1 drivers' girlfriends gallery

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.