Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

‘Mercedes is out of reach’ - Vettel

Sebastian Vettel says “Mercedes is out of reach” following the first day of practice ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.

Nico Rosberg topped the times during both of Friday’s practice sessions, with Lewis Hamilton never more than 0.1s slower. Vettel was third quickest in FP2 but 0.7s off the pace and despite strong race pace he doesn’t believe Mercedes can be challenged.

Asked if Ferrari has a top five car, Vettel replied: “Let’s hope so.

“I think it was today and, tomorrow, we will see. For what we did, we should be happy.

“It would be nice to stay in front of as many people as we can. I'm sure Mercedes is out of reach. You have to be realistic and as I said the most important thing today is that we ran and didn't have any problems. It was a very, very smooth day - I don’t remember the last smooth Friday I had like this from that point of view.”

Vettel highlighted the reliability of the SF15-T as one of the most pleasing aspects of Friday’s running from Ferrari’s point of view.

“Of course it was a good day. We didn’t have any issues with the car, reliability was good and the hard work we did over the tests was positive and we had a smooth day. In terms of performance, for sure the higher you are the better it is, but it's Friday and having been in F1 for quite a while, I know Friday is not important for lap times.”

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Australian Grand Prix

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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.