More to come from Ferrari in Abu Dhabi, promises Vettel

Sebastian Vettel insists that Ferrari will be strong contenders this weekend in the 2018 season finale in Abu Dhabi.

The team looked to be down on power and performance on Friday compared to their Mercedes and Red Bull rivals. But Vettel said he's not worried and that the team has yet to show its full potential at Yas Marina.

“I think today has been okay," he told reporters after the end of the evening session. "Obviously we are not quick enough yet.

"But we did improve between the two sessions," he continued. "Track conditions came towards us and hopefully tomorrow we will be better placed and we’ll try to do our best.

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"I think on Sunday a lot will depend on the tyres," he suggested. "We tried to work a bit on the car today and we still have some margin in terms of performance, but we need to find another extra bit of pace.

“Red Bull has been a bit strong in the races when it comes to tyres but as I said I am not entirely happy yet but in the evening it was better so let’s see.

"One lap we still have some margin and we should be okay tomorrow but for sure it is going to be tough and it is going to be tight.

“On the long run [the tyres] didn’t last, but I was quite surprised on the short run that you could go again and have another attempt. That was something that we did not expect.

"However, I think we should be able to improve for the race."

Vettel dismissed speculation that he had already turned his back on this season after Mercedes succeeded in clinching both the driver and team championships in the last two races.

"This is the last race of the season and I remain focused on this year," he insisted. "There’s still a few months to the beginning of a new championship, so I think we can still learn something from the car we have now.”

Unusually, Vettel was outpaced in both of Friday's practice sessions by his team mate Kimi Raikkonen who is heading into his final race with Ferrari this weekend before returning to Sauber in 2019.

"In the second session after sunset, we were able to improve our pace and the feeling with the car was pretty okay," said the Finn.

"Twilight conditions do not affect driving at all, only the tyres get a little bit cooler.

"If you look at the time sheet, you will see that everybody is pretty close, with six drivers within three tenths of a second, so we see where we can end up tomorrow.”

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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.