Vettel confident that title will come at Ferrari

Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel remains confident that another title remains achievable for him at Ferrari, despite a rocky spell for him since he arrived at Maranello in 2015.

"I guess it's a question of time," he said when asked if he felt that he would be champion again in the future.

"Obviously it was a big step when I decided to change, at the time when I did," he conceded. "It was clear that it would take some time, [but] we had a great season [in 2015], we got closer and closer to Mercedes.

"The hopes and expectations for 2016 were high," he continued, going on to admit that the season ultimately hadn't gone as well as he had hoped. Ferrari failed to record a single race victory last year with either Vettel or his team mate Kimi Raikkonen.

Ecclestone: 'Stop picking on Vettel!'

Worse still, Ferrari slipped behind Red Bull and finished down in third place in the constructors championship, after rounding out 2015 as runner-up to the dominant Mercedes marque.

"I think it's normal when you finish second in the Constructors' you aim to finish first,' Vettel said. "We haven't achieved what we set out to achieve [in 2016] but nevertheless our main target [in 2017] is to win the championship, to fight for the championship.

"I think there is a lot of change that I see, a lot of change that is going on inside the team that will make us stronger, so I'm pretty confident about that."

GALLERY: F1 drivers' wives and girlfriends

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.