Sebastian Vettel comments on the second Formula 1 pre-season test. Seb's view on the outcome of the second Formula 1 pre-season test.

The last day of Formula 1 pre-season testing for Sebastian Vettel, who today makes his final appearance driving the SF70H at the Catalunya Circuit in Barcelona, where Scuderia Ferrari has been working hard during the last two weeks in order to gather as much information as possible and optimize the settings and technical solutions for the new car ahead of the 2017 Formula 1 Championship.

During the launch break, Sebastian held a short press conference outside the Ferrari garage, as Scuderia Ferrari had announced from the start of the second pre-season testing session, with the Italian team being very relentless on the media outlets meetings and interviews held during recent weeks.

Despite again topping the timesheets, the Ferrari driver has played down the performance and rapid pace on the penultimate morning of pre-season testing, explaining that Mercedes is still “the team to beat”. Sebastian Vettel said: “I think you could see this morning what we were trying to do, going faster than the rest of the week and last week – it’s pretty clear. I feel pretty happy inside the car, but it’s still early days. It doesn’t really matter here in pre-season testing if you look at one single lap time, you need to look at more than that, and in that regard there’s still a lot of work [for Ferrari] to do. We need to do more laps, we have one-and-a-half days left, I hope we can get a lot of laps this afternoon, another good feeling, and hopefully a good finish to the test tomorrow.”

Sebastian also wanted to point out rivals Mercedes’ long-run pace through testing as seen during the last days: “If you look at the amount of laps Mercedes has done, historically how slow they were going in the pre-season tests, and how much they were able to ramp it up for the races…It’s clear that they are very fast, if you look at their long-run pace – I think they’re the ones to beat. It doesn’t really matter where we are now; we are growing, we need to work hard, we know that we have to improve and that’s why I think it’s important not to get distracted right now.” – the Scuderia Ferrari German driver concluded.