F1
Nate Saunders, General Editor, F1 8y

Sebastian Vettel: Ferrari's fight with Mercedes, not Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel insists Ferrari is still focused on fighting Mercedes at the front of the pack rather than fending off the challenge of Red Bull.

After the Mercedes drivers crashed out of the first lap in Spain the race was blown wide open, but it was Red Bull who capitalised after a stronger qualifying performance gave it track position over Ferrari in the opening stages. Ferrari worked on solving those qualifying issues, which hinged around a lack of pace through the Circuit de Catalunya's technical final sector, during two days of testing last week. 

Though Red Bull arrives in Monte Carlo with a Renault engine upgrade in Daniel Ricciardo's car Vettel says Ferrari is not going to change its 2016 target based on one disappointing result. 

"I think our aim is still looking forward ... in that regard our aim is Mercedes," Vettel said. "In Barcelona we had a bad Saturday which explained the difficult race on Sunday. In terms of raw speed we should have been ahead but we weren't. On the day I said well done to them and well done in particular to Max [Verstappen], but we move on.

"I think we have a strong package, we do have new bits here and there so obviously we want to make progress and make sure we close the gap to Mercedes rather than focus on what is going on behind."

Ferrari arrives at this weekend's Monaco Grand Prix having not claimed a victory in the principality since Michael Schumacher did so in 2001. Vettel, a winner himself in 2011 and 2013, is confident Ferrari will soon be in a position where it can rewrite some of those statistics.

"Well, you can probably apply the statistics to many places. We all know we want to bring Ferrari back to the top. The challenge is very difficult but the target is there so hopefully very, very soon you start having all these bad-sounding statistics and then we rock up with a win from the year before."

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