Sebastian Vettel admits that Scuderia Ferrari struggled to find the right balance with the tyres during their fast laps in Friday Free Practice at the Mexican Grand Prix.
Both Ferrari and Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport struggled to find the pace on Friday in Free Practice one and two, as both Aston Martin Red Bull Racing and Renault Sport Formula One Team topped both time sheets.
Teams found trouble with the Hypersoft tyres as the faster Pirelli tyre rapidly degraded away, leaving some teams struggling to set a lap on a slippery and hot track.
Vettel was among one of the drivers, but was able to set a time that would split the two Renault cars in FP2, but the German found Friday’s practice difficult to make the car work.
“Today it was difficult to make the car work the right way,” said Vettel.
“However, it was interesting to compare the packages this morning, while during the afternoon session we focused more on preparing for the qualifying session and the race, which was good.
“On the fast lap though, we struggled to find the right balance and squeeze everything from the tyres. The difficult part is that there is no grip and downforce, so it’s pretty slippery and the tyres don’t work the right way. So, I think this is why, in some cases, you can see big gaps in lap times.”
Vettel is hopeful to make a bounce back on Saturday ahead of an important race in order to save his championship hopes on Sunday. Vettel needs to win and ensure Lewis Hamilton finishes outside of the top eight in order for the title race to continue in Brazil.
With everyone struggling on the faster tyres throughout Friday, Vettel believes that everybody will improve on Saturday with the weather to be more cooler ahead of qualifying.
“We’ll try to fix everything for tomorrow. This will be the main job to do,”
“I believe everybody can still improve for tomorrow, and we’ll try as hard as we can, but I think the key point will be the tyres”
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