Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

'A lot of potential' at Ferrari - Vettel

Sebastian Vettel says there is "a lot of potential" within Ferrari which it needs to exploit to keep the pressure on Mercedes.

The four-time world champion took his third victory of the season in Singapore on Sunday to close the gap to Lewis Hamilton in the drivers' championship to 49 points ahead of this weekend's Japanese Grand Prix. With wet practice throughout Friday, Mercedes was unable to confirm it has fully recovered at Suzuka.

Asked if Ferrari will only get a comparison against Mercedes once it is dry, Vettel replied: "Yep, it’s difficult to say.

"It was a surprise to see Mercedes so far down [in Singapore], this has been said often enough. If it keeps being a surprise we don’t mind, but we have to keep our feet on the ground. We know there is a lot for us to do – a lot of potential amongst ourselves, so we have to focus on us and we see where the others are."

And Vettel says he is not realistically thinking about the championship at this stage, sitting nearly two race wins behind Hamilton.

"It’s better to be closer than further away, but it’s still a massive gap. There’s a lot of races still to come, but every Sunday is a new opportunity. It’s wrong in this moment to talk about the championship for us.

"We know we have a lot of work to do, we know we have to improve, but we also know that some things don’t happen from now to tomorrow so we have to be patient. We will try everything we can to give our best and then we see where we are with a couple of races to go."

REPORT: Kvyat edges Rosberg in wet FP2 at Suzuka

AS IT HAPPENED: Japanese Grand Prix 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.