Ferrari should not change approach - Vettel

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Sebastian Vettel says Ferrari does not need to change its approach in order to finish on the podium or win a race again this year.

Following three wins last season, Vettel has yet to win a race in 2016 and he has only finished on the podium once - at Monza - in the last ten races. However, Vettel believes Ferrari has shown it has the pace to be challenging for podiums and wins in the remaining rounds, and so should maintain the same approach it has had at recent races.

"I think what we need to do is do exactly what we are doing, I don’t think we are lacking anything," Vettel said. "Obviously in Austin we were not as competitive as we would have liked to have been, I think in Japan we had the potential to put both cars on the podium if we start where we qualified. So yeah, very much it has been up and down, probably the last 10 races I guess for the team as well.

"I don’t think we need to actually change anything. It’s clear that we have the car that we have, we know we are not the favourites going into the weekend but still we are here to fight and I think we have a chance always to win and always to fight for podiums."

And Vettel says the signs from last year's Mexican Grand Prix suggest Ferrari should be competitive again at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez this weekend.

“This is a track where nobody really has any experience other than last year. I just looked back during the week, last year was actually very good in terms of pace here, we were very strong. My race wasn’t very good because I crashed but the raw pace and speed was there."

Chris Medland's 2016 Mexican Grand Prix preview

TECHNICAL SNAPSHOT: Austin

Scene at the United States Grand Prix

2017 driver line-ups so far

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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.