Interview

Pacesetter Vettel ends his Jerez test delighted with progress

Four-time world champion hands over to Kimi Raikkonen for remainder of testing.

Sebastian Vettel ended his allocated Jerez testing time again at the top on day two, and now flies back to Maranello to continue work on the simulator as Ferrari bids to improve its new SF15-T.

After 88 laps of running on Monday, Vettel worked down into the 1m20s bracket, over 1.5s quicker than reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton.

He now hands the new Ferrari over to Kimi Raikkonen for the final two days of the test, and was happy with his first experience of driving for the Scuderia.

“We did a lot of laps today,” he said. “Overall we can be happy. I hope that tomorrow and the day after I hope that Kimi finds the same reliability I have had. Speaking of the feelings inside the car, I’m quite happy, we have a good platform to start working from.”

Settling in to life at Ferrari

Of his new surroundings, Vettel added: “It’s a lot of change for me, but for the better. People are making it very easy for me, giving me everything I need, which is always nice.”

In terms of laptimes, Vettel has headed both days of testing. But he knows that is no barometer of ultimate performance, as cars are clearly running to different programmes, such as fuel loads.

“Generally we have a different approach today than Mercedes,” he said of the current F1 benchmark. “Mercedes were doing longer runs and extreme long runs at times. They didn’t do as many laps as yesterday, but still they are the favourites.

“Where we’re coming from we have a lot of change going on, a lot of new things and stuff that we learnt. In that regard, the most important thing is to keep running and understand the numbers.

“We will now do some simulator running, to try and maximize the improvements, to understand and analyse them. The whole team will be very busy.”