Scuderia Ferrari German driver Sebastian Vettel finished runner-up to his main title rival Lewis Hamilton in Friday’s practice for the 2017 Austrian GP, as the four-time Formula One world champion admits that Mercedes are looking “very quick” ahead of the qualifying session and the race on Sunday.
While Lewis Hamilton claimed the double on Friday, Sebastian Vettel was fourth in the morning’s session before wrapping up the day with a P2 time at the end of the second practice session for the 2017 Austrian GP.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver clocked a 1:05.630 to finish 0.147s shy of his title rival.
Asked to comment on whether he expects to be competitive come Saturday or the Maranello team could face a similar outcome as two weeks ago, Sebastian replied: “Hopefully more competitive. Baku was a one-off in many ways. Qualifying for us wasn’t good, the positioning wasn’t too bad but the gap was too big. We just didn’t feel as comfortable or confident as we should have. For here I haven’t seen much yet but it should be close. It is a short track so you’d imagine it would be close. I think Mercedes are the favourite as they seemed very quick no matter when they went out today. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.” – Scuderia Ferrari’s German driver concluded, as reported by the Italian media after the second practice session in the afternoon.
Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen had a slightly more troublesome day, but in the end he was not worried about the remainder of the weekend and how things will go on Sunday: “It was a very normal day, trying different solutions and seeing how they went. We struggled a bit with some things, but we know what is going on and we should be able to fix it. It was one of those Fridays, not great and not bad either. Obviously it could have been a bit better and straightforward, but it’s only the first day of practice. I don’t think it will be very difficult with tires as long as we do the normal things; it’s a very similar story as any other race. Now we have to go through everything and improve for tomorrow”. – Kimi Raikkonen said ahead of the 2017 Austrian GP.
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