Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel seeking Ferrari surprise on Saturday

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Sebastian Vettel has called on Ferrari to try and spring a surprise on Saturday following ominous pace from Mercedes ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.

Mercedes introduced an updated power unit for the race at Monza, with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg duly going more than a second clear of the field in FP1. Vettel closed that gap to 0.75s in the afternoon practice session and he says Ferrari is not disheartened by the challenge of trying to cut the gap this weekend.

“It’s obviously difficult to say what people are doing on Friday but they are very strong," Vettel said. "They do look very, very quick. No surprise I would say and if they’re not in front tomorrow then that would be a surprise. But we like surprises, so we’ll do our utmost to turn things around.”

And Vettel says he is not too concerned if he is not able to challenge for pole position on Saturday, with Monza offering a number of overtaking opportunities.

“It is important, it is important everywhere. To be fair this is one of the better circuits to overtake but for sure, we target to qualify as high up and ideally pass very few cars in the race. We’ll see how it works out but before qualifying we have to make sure we make a step forward with the car.”

0.021s between Hamilton and Rosberg in FP2

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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.