Sebastian Vettel admitted his surprise to see Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg improve so much during the final phase of qualifying in Bahrain on Saturday after being forced to settle for third on the grid.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver was happy to take the fight to the Mercedes duo earlier in the session, and felt there was nothing to complain about his own run to P3 at the Sakhir International Circuit.
“I am happy to take the fight,” revealed Vettel. “Let’s see where we are during the race. Today there’s nothing really to complain about.
“It’s a big surprise that both Lewis and Nico in the end were able to improve so much. For me the track was similar to the run before and that’s why the time was practically the same.”
Vettel is also hoping to make another good start after jumping into the lead from the same place on the grid in Australia two weeks ago, although he hopes that the race result is different after being forced to settle third following a strategy call that in hindsight turned out to be the incorrect one.
“Tomorrow we hope to have a good start, but not doing the same as in Australia thereafter… We know we are not yet where we want to be but I think we are pushing very hard though,” said Vettel.
“Obviously the season has started already so it’s up to us to make sure we keep making technical progress, but as I said many times the car is a big improvement to last year and this will provide more opportunities to improve also in the future; but we really have to keep up the pressure.
“You can talk about what can happen in ten races but we have to focus first of all on tomorrow, prepare the race as good as we can because there’s a chance to do well and to win. That’s my belief. If I am right or not we’ll see, but that’s the joy, I think, and what I love about racing.
“To put it in simple terms, I would love to win tomorrow. Naturally if we had more speed we’d also have a better chance to win. But I think we are on the right track, we are a team and we try to improve together.
“Today was a good day for us, all the car balance was good and we got everything we wanted by ourselves, which is the most important thing.”
