World Championship leader Sebastian Vettel has expressed confidence that Ferrari can successfully address its current weaknesses, and lauded the risk-taking mentality fostered at the team.
Vettel has taken four victories this season, along with two pole positions, to hold a 14-point title advantage over Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton at the mid-point of the campaign.
Ferrari entered the summer break on top, courtesy of a Vettel-led 1-2 result at the Hungarian Grand Prix, but has been on the back foot compared to Mercedes at high-speed circuits, and venues where the power unit is more influential, such as at Silverstone.
Vettel nonetheless feels that Ferrari has the capability to remain in the thick of the fight up front.
“We have a great car and we know, I think, by now with a lot of races done, what the strength of the car is, where the weaknesses are, that’s where we need to work on,” he said.
“For sure you cannot expect it to change overnight but I’m very confident [in] the group of people.
“We have a lot of people that you maybe don’t know because from the outside people try to identify a team with one person in terms of who is the driver or obviously it’s easy because there are only two.
“But in terms of who is designing the car, it very often ends up with one… you point the finger at one person. It’s not fair.
“The team is very big and there’s a lot of people so we have a lot of great people, young people coming up and a great culture, people taking risks and that’s what we need to do.
“We want to win so I’m very happy where we are going but it’s not yet enough.”
Vettel added that he was pleased with Ferrari making the “least noise” during a busy winter period in which teams prepared for the new era, with faster, wider, and more spectacular cars.
“2016 was difficult, I think, for many reasons, but I think it was a great year to set things up, a lot of change for the team,” Vettel reiterated.
“Over the winter I think we were the team that made the least noise. There was a lot of talk about the new cars and the new regulations and how it will favour one team over the other and how it will bring back other teams and so on.
“I was very happy that we just worked, we just kept to ourselves and did the job.”
