Sebastian Vettel believes mistakes made at the start of 2016 cost Ferrari in its fight with Red Bull for second in the constructors' championship.
Ferrari started this season with the target of fighting Mercedes for the championship until the final race of the season having taken three wins last year. The early signs were promising, with Vettel losing out on victory in Melbourne due to a strategic error, but he then failed to start the Bahrain Grand Prix after a power unit failure on the formation lap.
Having also failed to finish in Russia due to a collision with Daniil Kvyat, Vettel sees the start to the season as costly as he feels Ferrari had the better all-round car than Red Bull.
"Up and down not as good as expected," Vettel said. "Overall it has been a bit up and down season I think it could have been a lot better points-wise I think we didn’t manage to score enough points at the beginning of the year.
"Towards the end we have found ourselves in a very tight battle with Red Bull but I think overall we have had the stronger package and should have finished second in the constructors’ championship. Especially at the beginning we dropped too many points.
"The big disappointment is that we didn’t manage to fight with Mercedes but nevertheless there have been a lot of things happen in the background which should make the team stronger for the next years."
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