Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Arrivabene tells Ferrari to switch focus to Mercedes

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Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has told the team to believe in itself and chase Mercedes after finishing third in the Australian Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel beat Williams’ Felipe Massa to the final podium place behind the dominant Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at Albert Park on Sunday.

With Ferrari coming off the back of a season which yielded just two podiums in 2014 - finishing fourth behind Red Bull and Williams in the constructors’ championship - Arrivabene admits the original focus was to catch those two teams but he now feels Mercedes should be Ferrari’s target.

“Our goal was that we were looking forward towards Williams and Red Bull at the beginning,” Arrivabene said. “Now we need to be a bit more convinced by ourselves and to try to reduce the gap to the Mercedes guys.”

Hamilton won by over 30 seconds in Melbourne, leading Christian Horner to call on the FIA to try and rein Mercedes back in. However, Arrivabene doesn’t agree with Red Bull’s approach.

“Of course [Mercedes’ dominance] is not a situation that we like but our role is to challenge the status quo, it’s not to write down the rules.”

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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.