Sebastian Vettel narrowly beat new team mate Charles Leclerc to the fastest time as Ferrari signalled a return to form in Bahrain Grand Prix practice on Friday (March 29).
The German, a four times world champion who had trailed the Monegasque in the first of the day’s two sessions, lapped the floodlit 5.4km Sakhir desert track in one minute 28.846 seconds, pipping Leclerc by just 0.035.
Such a different picture compared to Melbourne. How do you explain it?
Sebastian Vettel: “I don’t know. We will see. Certainly today was a better day for us overall but I think we still need to pick up pace for tomorrow. We hope to be in a better shape and much closer than in Melbourne. Today the result was good and we were probably on a different strategy than other people, so I wouldn’t put too much attention on that. We need to improve for tomorrow, as Mercedes looks pretty fast. We tried everything in Australia. Coming here we knew some things weren’t exactly right in Australia. Still I feel we have some more potential in the car which we have to unleash for tomorrow.”
Sebastian Vettel on the feeling of the car compared to Australia: “Less bumpy, but that counts with the track. And more trust in the rear which was our, let’s say, Achilles heel in Australia. We still need to find something. Not entirely happy today. Just don’t have the feeling yet that I want to have. It’s been a tricky day, very slippery. Difficult to extract always the best from the tyres. It’s better to have the spin today than tomorrow or on Sunday!”
“Not sure what to expect but I expect Mercedes to be very strong in qualifying and also keeping an eye on the Red Bulls, they look pretty strong in the corners today. I think it will be very close. I hope it will be very close. To me, I think the result is one thing, but we still need to work and I think we can improve, that’s the feeling I had inside the car. For sure it was better than Australia, but there is still more in the car.”
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