Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

'I want to beat Nico' - Vettel

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Sebastian Vettel says his main target for the rest of the season is to beat Nico Rosberg to second place in the drivers' championship.

Lewis Hamilton wrapped up his third drivers' title at last weekend's United States Grand Prix, winning the race ahead of Rosberg and Vettel. The result leaves Vettel with a four-point advantage over his fellow German heading in to this weekend's Mexican Grand Prix, with three races remaining this season.

When it was put to Vettel that Mercedes could try to use Hamilton to help Rosberg finish second in the standings, Vettel replied: "I don’t really care.

"I want to beat Nico and that’s the primary target that I have. The rest doesn’t matter too much for me, what they do."

And Vettel is pleased with the atmosphere within Ferrari despite having admitted to his personal disappointment when Hamilton secured the title in Austin.

"We are on a good way in general this season and we have surprised a lot of people and surely exceeded our expectations as well. It has been an all-in-all very positive so far and for sure second place is the target. First is out of reach, but second is better than third, so we try to go for second."

With the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez a new circuit for all of the drivers, Vettel is quietly confident Ferrari will be competitive in Mexico.

"I haven’t been on the old track, so I can’t compare, but it looked very exciting. Unfortunately we lost some of the really high-speed corners, but I think it should still be an interesting circuit. It’s quite technical in places and I haven’t been out yet, so I guess we need to wait until tomorrow.

"In general, I think we have done a great job this year on the power unit side and there is a long straight here which should help us. Unfortunately we are not yet the favourites but I think we are just behind and we try our best to be as close as possible to Mercedes and ideally in front."

Chris Medland's Mexican Grand Prix preview

Technical analysis: United States

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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.