Sebastian Vettel finished third in both free practice sessions at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza on Friday, but hopes Saturday’s running will be better.
The two Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team drivers beat the Scuderia Ferrari driver in both sessions, but his afternoon session was affected by traffic and then by the Virtual Safety Car, utilised when Kevin Magnussen stopped on track.
Vettel feels there is a chance that Ferrari can challenge Mercedes on Saturday, and will work thoroughly through the data overnight to see where they can improve and find that extra tenth or two that may well be all-important in qualifying.
“Today has been a mixed day” said Vettel, “and I hope tomorrow is going to be better. This afternoon for the first part of the session we mostly used Soft tyres, but I am not entirely happy because we had a mixed run with a lot of traffic and the Virtual Safety Car period.
“So it hasn’t been the ideal day you are normally looking for, but I guess it was the same for everyone. Overall, we should have enough data to go through now. If we can improve a couple of things tomorrow, then it should be better.
“Mercedes has been strong here during the last couple of years but we focus on ourselves. We try to improve the car because there’s still a little bit missing and then we’ll start from there.”
