Sebastian Vettel admitted the threat of rain at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace on Friday meant he and his Scuderia Ferrari team completed more laps than usual, but despite this he feels the team may be on the back foot this weekend compared to their rivals.
The German completed thirty-two laps during the morning session held under blue skies, and forty-eight more during the afternoon session, which was more overcast and saw a little sprinkling of rain that did not amount to anything significant.
Although completing more than a race distance worth of laps on Friday, Vettel ended up sixth fastest in the morning session, 0.782 seconds off the pace of Lewis Hamilton, and although he improved in the afternoon session, he ended up 0.360 seconds back on the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team racer.
“I think that in the end we ran more than what we expected as it didn’t rain,” said Vettel. “It was nice to be able to do a lot of laps today.
“We need to find the right balance and this should help us get the pace for the qualifying session and the race, but I still think it won’t be easy to defeat our main competitors. We’ll see where we get tomorrow.”
