Sebastian Vettel feels there is scope to improve ahead of Saturday’s running after placing inside the top four in both free practice sessions at the Red Bull Ring on Friday, with the German ending up closest to the two Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport drivers at the head of the field.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver was fourth fastest in the morning session in Austria after setting a best time of 1:05.180s, which saw him end 0.341 seconds behind pacesetter Lewis Hamilton, while he improved that time to a 1:04.815s in the afternoon session, 0.236 seconds back on his championship rival.
His final attempt at improving his time was ruined by the red flag caused by Pierre Gasly ending up in the gravel trap with a broken suspension approaching the final corner as a result of running over the kerbs at turn nine, with Vettel feeling those kerbs are ‘aggressive’ once again this year at the Red Bull Ring.
“We can always improve, but today I’m happy,” said Vettel. “The car was pretty good, so we’ll see what we can do tomorrow. On this track it is true that the kerbs can be “aggressive” somehow, but today we didn’t have any issues and hopefully we won’t have problems tomorrow and in the race.
“We did a lot of laps, which is good, and usually on Saturday we can make a good step forward, so we should be well prepared for tomorrow and for Sunday.”
