Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel ready for Mercedes fightback

Sebastian Vettel is expecting Mercedes to fight back on Saturday but believes qualifying will be close at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Daniil Kvyat topped the times in second practice as no Mercedes-powered car finished in the top three on Friday evening. Lewis Hamilton was fourth quickest and Nico Rosberg seventh, with Vettel in fifth and team-mate Kimi Raikkonen second fastest.

While Vettel was encouraged by Ferrari's showing, he is primed for a close fight with Mercedes and Red Bull in qualifying.

"It was a good day for us, the car seems to work, but I think we can still improve," Vettel said. "I was not entirely happy with the short runs i had so for qualifying we have to improve a bit. For the race, in the end it looked quite OK. I don't know, I didn’t see that much but the pace seemed to be there so we will see.

"The Mercedes will be quick, I don’t know what happened to them today, they looked a bit slow but I’m sure they will change it for tomorrow, we know some of the Mercedes teams don’t show everything on Friday so we’ll see. As expected, the Red Bulls are fairly quick round here so it will be tight tomorrow."

And Vettel says there is more to come from Ferrari even having been competitive throughout Friday's running.

"I like this circuit, I think on the short runs I was not entirely happy, there is a bit of margin to improve. Tomorrow if we put all these things together, we should be a bit quicker. It’s only Friday so we should keep our feet on the ground."

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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.