by Matt Youson on Jul 30, 2011Sebastian Vettel has won six races out of ten this year, and in the other four taken three second places and a fourth. He comfortably leads the F1 Drivers’ Championship. But all is not rosy in the garden of Red Bull as Vettel’s fourth place in Germany is his worse finish since Monza last year and the generally improving Ferraris and McLarens seem intent up on making a fight of it this season.
Vettel may take some satisfaction - though probably not much in the way of consolation - from having consistently stated that a dip in Red Bull’s dominance was inevitable at some point this year, and simply a fact of life when competing against teams with the resources and calibre of Ferrari and McLaren. It was a view he espoused again when sitting down the press before the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend. This is what he had to say…
Seb, what have you done over the past few days? Have you analysed the performances from the past races?
"What did I do? I went back home, had a couple of days rest and did some training in preparation for this weekend. Obviously we have analysed what happened last weekend, but, y’know, there’s only three days in between the races, so it’s not much time for the team because we have to get all of our stuff back into the trucks and come here. It’s a lot of work and very short nights. We had a deep look but now we have to re-focus on this race. We cannot spend too much of our time thinking about Nürburgring instead of driving here."
'We can’t change the result at the Nürburgring but we can change the result here.'
What do you take away from the results in Germany?
"Well, we finished third and fourth, it’s a result that’s not a disaster but we’re not happy with it. So, we can’t be satisfied but we have to accept it. For here, obviously our target is to do better than third and fourth and, yeah, we have a couple of things to play around with to try to make the package a little bit more competitive again. I think Nürburgring was pretty tricky, particularly for myself: I didn’t really feel comfortable Friday through Sunday but I think we have understood most of it - and this is a different track with different conditions.
"We can’t change the result at the Nürburgring but we can change the result here. There’s no point trying to find any excuses, that race is done. I think the people who finished ahead of me deserved to finish ahead of me but as I said, I’m not happy with that and I want to have it the other way around this weekend.
Why did you not feel comfortable in Germany? Was there something wrong with the car or the tyres?
"No, I think it was a tricky weekend with the conditions. It was very cold but I don’t want to blame it on conditions. Obviously, Mark was a little bit quicker throughout the weekend and I was struggling a little bit and I never really found a good balance. But, as I said, though we didn’t have the easiest time and I think we have understood most of it.
"We’ll have more time in the break to look at the Nürburgring again with the conditions we had and compare that to other races - maybe this one as it’s straight after - but it’s hard to say within only a few days."
Source: Red Bull
