Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Suzuka shows Ferrari is closing in - Arrivabene

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Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene says the Japanese Grand Prix showed Ferrari is closing the performance gap to Mercedes.

Mercedes struggled in Singapore and Sebastian Vettel took an impressive victory as Ferrari and Red Bull dominated on the softest tyre compounds which were selected for the street circuit. Suzuka presented a completely different challenge, with a switch to the hardest two types of tyre at the high-speed track, with Mercedes duly securing a one-two.

While Lewis Hamilton led home team-mate Nico Rosberg by 18 seconds, Vettel came home third, just 1.9s behind the second Mercedes. Arrivabene says the result highlights how much progress Ferrari has made over the last five races.

“When you are not winning of course you are disappointed, this is normal,” Arrivabene said. “But the right comparison here is not with Singapore, it’s with Silverstone. If you look at the gap that we had to Mercedes in Silverstone and the gap that we have here, it’s shorter here - 12 seconds [sic]. That means we have improved a lot and as I said many, many times, certain tracks like Suzuka are not the tracks that are good for our car.

“I have to say that after Monza the engine helps, a lot! But as you know, the car is still more or less the same and I’m very proud about the work of all our engineers, of all our team and in particular about the engine department.”

And Arrivabene says both Ferrari and Mercedes turned their engines down to protect their power units in the closing stages once he felt Vettel could not catch Rosberg again.

“The gap the was quite representative. The gap was quite representative because I think at the end Mercedes tried to save the engine, we were doing the same because at that stage it was insanity to try and get more, but I think it’s quite realistic.”

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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.