I can still win 2016 F1 title - Vettel

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Sebastian Vettel is still targeting winning this year's drivers' championship despite a disappointing start to the season for Ferrari.

The four-time world champion has yet to win a race this season, with Mercedes winning five of the first six while Max Verstappen was victorious in Barcelona. While Red Bull took the fight to Mercedes in Monaco, Vettel says he still believes he can win the drivers' title despite currently sitting 46 points behind championship leader Nico Rosberg.

"If you give up at that point and say there is no hope, or reason to believe in the fact that we can turn the championship around ... I was believing in winning the championship last year and, if you look at how competitive we were, that was a good thing to do on paper, but we’re not racing on paper!" Vettel said.

"If it’s all done on paper, we’d all stay at home and we’d know in February who will be world champion – and that would be quite boring. Everything in life would be quite boring if we had the ‘on paper’ approach so we do the opposite, we go racing where anything can happen.

"Two weeks ago, in Monaco, I think it was a good race, very exciting but it could have been different for us, for other people, whatever, but that is what we are going to find out in the race.

"I believe we can turn it around. I believe in the team. I know that, currently, we are not currently in the position that we want to be, in a position here that we can approach the race and be 1-2 for sure, but you never know.

"We will try our utmost, fighting very hard, and giving it everything to win this race - and the next race – and I wasn’t the best in maths, but I don’t have to be a genius to do the calculations to say that we can still win."

And Vettel is hopeful Ferrari will be able to show it is capable of challenging Mercedes with an improved performance this weekend in Canada, with a power unit upgrade set to be introduced.

"I think we have some new parts, so I hope we can make a step forward. I think, in general, it is a quick circuit, and I think we had a strong race last year, although the result was not ideal. We started from the back so it was certainly entertaining, so I think good memories. I always enjoyed the track so I’m looking forward to this weekend."

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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.