Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel quietly confident in Ferrari's Russian GP hopes

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Sebastian Vettel is quietly confident he can have a strong weekend at the Russian Grand Prix after an error-strewn start to the season.

The four-time world champion was in position to challenge for victory in the Australian Grand Prix when a strategic error by Ferrari handed the win to Nico Rosberg. Vettel was then unable to try and bounce back in Bahrain when a power unit failure stopped him on the formation lap.

In China, Vettel hit team-mate Kimi Raikkonen at Turn 1 - compromising both of their races - but recovered to finish a distant second to Rosberg. Having had such a challenging start to the year, the Ferrari driver believes a clean weekend will yield a strong result in Sochi.

"I think I only had two races, the two races I have had are OK," Vettel said. "In Australia we had a chance to win but [in China] with a bit of luck a strong recovery for both drivers.

"Overall not the smoothest road to Russia so hopefully we will have a solid weekend there. Last year the car felt pretty good and we made a step forward with the car and power unit, so quite confident for Russia. A couple of bits coming so hopefully a bit stronger and a smoother weekend."

And Vettel takes some confidence from the points he could recover from China having felt his race may have ended at Turn 1.

"I think, in the end, with the contact I had in turn one or two I was very lucky to be able to continue anyway. It was a big hit with Kimi and the steering wheel was a little bit off-centre for the whole race. I got used to it but surely not ideal."

Scene at the Chinese Grand Prix

Chinese Grand Prix - Quotes of the week

F1i's Driver rating - Shanghai

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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.