Sebastian Vettel felt his SF71H was working well during practice for the German Grand Prix on Friday, and he was happy with all three tyre compounds he used across the two sessions.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver and current Championship leader ended fourth fastest in both the morning and afternoon sessions around the Hockenheimring circuit, ending 0.271 seconds off the pace setting time of Daniel Riccardo in FP1 before closing FP2 0.225 seconds off Max Verstappen. He managed to use all three compounds Pirelli have brought to Germany this weekend, running the soft compound in the morning before running with the Ultrasoft and Medium in the afternoon.
Although he acknowledges that there is always pace to be found between Friday and Saturday’s running, Vettel feels there is already a strong base set-up already with his SF71H, even though rain is predicted to fall on Saturday.
“The car has been working well today and it’s been a normal Friday,” said Vettel. “Today, we tried a little bit of everything. I think we got along quite well with the tyre selection that we used today.
“Now we have to find out how we’ve been working compared to the others, but I think that even if we can still improve our lap time, the car is fine. I think the high temperatures we had today could probably have an impact somehow, but we don’t know exactly what the weather will be like.
“Tomorrow it should rain, but on Sunday we expect it to be dry again. It was very nice to see a lot of Ferrari flags here today and it’s great to see a lot of people supporting us!”
