Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel encouraged by Ferrari direction

Sebastian Vettel says the progress shown by Ferrari since Friday practice bodes well for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The four-time world champion called on Ferrari to “clean up” in a number of areas ahead of Saturday’s running after struggling on Friday, and he duly qualified third on the grid. Having bounced back strongly, Vettel praised Ferrari for ensuring it got the best possible result having come under threat from Red Bull.

“It’s true we had a difficult day yesterday with something stopping us, slowing us down and it was difficult to get a feel for the car,” Vettel said. “So for today I’m glad that we found a direction. We took it a little bit easier, trying to build it up in FP3 which worked, then throughout qualifying I think the car kept coming to us, kept improving. So I think third is the maximum we could do today so we can be very, very happy, especially with the rough start to the weekend.”

While wanting to give Mercedes a hard time in the race, Vettel is wary of the threat posed by the likes of Williams and Red Bull.

“Who knows on this track, usually there’s a lot of things happening on Sunday so maybe we can do something against [Mercedes] but I expect a hard race with the people behind, the two Williams and the Red Bulls in particular.

“It’s a great race and a definitely want to win it – hopefully tomorrow– we’ll see with a bit of luck. Obviously in normal conditions it’s difficult to beat [Mercedes].

“We started off on a much better foot this morning and obviously were able to carry that into qualifying. We knew it will be tight, especially with Red Bulls as they showed very, very strong pace yesterday but we managed to stay ahead – so that’s good for today but for tomorrow obviously there’s a big job to be done.”

AS IT HAPPENED: Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying

Click here for a gallery of Sergio Perez's crash in FP1 at the Hungarian 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.