In an interview for spiegel.de, Scuderia Ferrari German driver Sebastian Vettel explains what the Maranello team is missing to compete with Mercedes and talks about his relationship with teammate Charles Leclerc:
SPIEGEL: Don’t young drivers like Leclerc have to be blessed with a fair amount of disrespect if they want to survive in Formula One? How did you meet the established drivers when you started at the age of 19?
Sebastian Vettel: Disrespect is not the right word. I had a lot of respect for someone by just seeing their name from the television: Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, later I even went against Michael Schumacher, which was especially fun because he was my idol as a kid. But I was not in awe. I tried to get things sorted as good as possible. And when I read my name on the list of times ahead of those of the big ones, I was very proud of it.
SPIEGEL: Your new teammate Leclerc is sometimes faster than you. How do you deal with each other when you are both colleagues and competitors?
Sebastian Vettel: I think we are a good team. We are working hard to develop the car together. The goal is to become world champion with Ferrari. We both want to achieve that.
SPIEGEL: In the end, someone will have to back off.
Sebastian Vettel: Enzo Ferraris once said: “Not a single person is bigger than Ferrari.”
SPIEGEL: Why did you take up the challenge in 2015 of becoming a World Champion with Ferrari? You have failed four times now.
Sebastian Vettel: If you commit yourself to the Formula 1 project, you also have to accept non-winning. After the introduction of the new regulations with the hybrid engines, the years until 2016 were characterized by Mercedes being totally superior. There seemed to be a chance in 2017 and 2018, but to be honest, in both years we were not strong enough to have a say.
SPIEGEL: The first four races of 2019 nourish the suspicion that the train will leave again without you. Mercedes has a perfect record with Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas: four double victories. What makes them so strong?
Sebastian Vettel: They have the best car and masterfully put that superiority in use. But I’m sure: when we’re at eye level, we can beat them. We have already been able to prove this in phases.
SPIEGEL: Ferrari was quick in the pre-season tests, even on Fridays, during free practice for the race, you were often ahead. What is missing for the actual Grand Prix?
Sebastian Vettel: Let’s take the last race in Baku: bringing the tires up to operating temperature has always been an issue in Formula One; they should not be too cold and not too hot. The regulations stipulate that two different tire types must be used in the race. Like all the drivers in the front field, I started with the softer compound, usually after two laps the tires reach the correct temperature window. That did not work for me, I lost seven seconds to Mercedes in eleven laps.
SPIEGEL: In Formula One, that’s a little eternity.
Sebastian Vettel: Right. After that, like most people, I changed the tires to a slightly harder compound – and from then on I drove around the same times as Mercedes, so we were on par. In short: The Mercedes cars fit better in Baku to the softer tires than ours. Which is crazy: It may be that Mercedes themselves do not know why their tires work.
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