Sebastian Vettel may have finished quickest during Friday’s running for the 2018 British Grand Prix, but the championship leader says the weekend’s competitive picture is yet to develop.
Vettel, who trailed both Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport cars in first free practice, improved his lap time to a 1:27.552 in the second session to pip Lewis Hamilton by just under two tenths-of-a-second.
But Vettel remains cautious of his British Grand Prix hopes, despite being happy with the performance of his SF71H.
“The situation is difficult to judge,” said Vettel , “because we haven’t seen much today and mostly collected data, and also because time is limited between the two sessions. But the important thing is that we had a good Friday, everything we put on the car seemed to work, and I felt happy with the balance of the car straight away and managed to find a good rhythm from the beginning.
One of the features of Friday’s free practice sessions was Silverstone’s third DRS zone that sees cars fly through the ultra-quick turn one with their drag reduction system wide open. While some drivers suffered with high-speed frights, Vettel believes other elements of Silverstone have played a bigger part in Scuderia Ferrari‘s day.
“There has been a lot of talk about the third DRS zone: it may be easier to drop the wing for us than for smaller teams, whose cars have probably less downforce, anyway we’ll see what happens in the race.
“I believe that most of the difference today is due to the new asphalt and… the amazing English summer!”.
