F1 | Ferrari, Vettel: “In Australia we would not have presented ourselves as favourites”

Ferrari would not have been the favorite in Australia if the Melbourne race had taken place as scheduled. He admitted it Sebastian Vettel, as reported by the journalist Leo Turrini on his blog Profondo Rosso. The German thus clarified the performance of the Ferrari SF1000, with the new Rossa which had caused quite a few doubts at the end of the winter tests held last February at Montmeló.

"There had been the Barcelona tests and there we honestly understood that we were not as fast as we would have hoped. So very realistically we wouldn't have gone into Australia as favourites – Vettel declared to Turrini in the interview published in Resto del Carlino, il Giorno e la Nazione -. Recover the gap? Not now, in the sense that the factories are closed, the racing department is closed, the project cannot be developed. But the season was supposed to be very long. When we start again, we will start again from the data we had collected in the tests. And we will work to find what we were still missing, on the eve of Melbourne".

To a specific question about the FIA-Ferrari agreement relating to the power unit mounted on the SF90, which has fueled many doubts on the part of the Ferrari's competitors, Vettel replied: "I believe that the international federation has the task of enforcing the rules. If we had broken them, we would have been disqualified. But this didn't happen. I have faith in the loyalty of my team and I respect the FIA. Then, on the issues you call political, you have to listen to Binotto, he is the boss".