Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel plays down tyre differences between Ferrari and Merc

Sebastian Vettel says the difference in tyre choices between Ferrari and Mercedes will be much less pronounced by Sunday.

As part of new regulations which see teams given more freedom to choose from three tyre compounds for each race, selections have to be made 13 weeks in advance of each flyaway grand prix. For Bahrain, Ferrari has opted to select three sets of mediums and only four sets of soft tyres, while each Mercedes driver has just one set of mediums and six sets of softs.

With the medium tyre proving to be the best race tyre during the Australian Grand Prix, there has been heightened focus on the different selections but Vettel says the final race allocations are unlikely to differ greatly.

"We will see, on paper it looks more than it is because by the time you get to Sunday you are left with a lot less tyres," Vettel said. "We are confident with the choice we have made and we know our thinking behind it. I don’t know what the others were thinking, but I think we will find out."

Teams have to give back a number of tyres during a race weekend. As a result of reaching Q3 in Australia, Mercedes and Ferrari each entered the race in Melbourne with six sets of tyres left for each driver.

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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.