Vettel: “Confused by Red Bull's mixed performance”

Sebastian Vettel said Red Bull Racing is still trying to understand the difference in performance between Bahrain, where the German took victory, and Spain's disappointing sixth place.

“For the first time this year we had a problem-free weekend in Bahrain, a weekend where I was happy with the balance of the car and a good result came in,” said Vettel. “We arrived in Barcelona hoping for a similar result but we were not competitive and we tried to understand the reasons. We have not found a clear answer. We have some ideas, I was quite satisfied in free practice on Friday and Saturday but in qualifying we didn't make the steps forward that the others did. It's difficult to draw conclusions but when you start from behind you end up in traffic in the first part of the race and the gap to the leaders increases, our maximum in those conditions was fifth place. At the moment it is difficult to understand why sometimes we are fast and sometimes slow and why the pace changes, but we are not the only ones who are suffering a bit at the moment”.

To those who asked him about the influence of the 2012 Pirelli tires on performances, Vettel admitted that the tires had mixed up the cards but declared that the best team will still prevail in the remainder of the season.

“If you look at the first five races you will see that the drivers and teams who deserved it won. We saw five teams and five drivers win so I think out of 20 races I don't think it's fair to say the winner will be lucky. In a way it's still the start of the season and I think the tires are extremely difficult to understand."