Sebastian Vettel: “Ferrari slow to accept mistakes”

Kimi Räikkönen won his first race since the 2013 Australian Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas. However, the victory came after Scuderia Ferrari decided to discard the recent development made on the SF71H and fall back on the specifications previously used.

Sebastian Vettel, on the other hand, missed out on pole by a sliver of a margin. He was further given a grid penalty which dropped him down to 5th and despite a spin at the initial stages of the race, finished fourth to keep his championship chances alive.

The German has not had the best time during the second half of the season as he has watched his title rival, Lewis Hamilton, build a 70 points lead over him. He believes that even though Ferrari had the pace during the United States Grand Prix, it was a little too late.

Speaking about the same, Vettel said, “It took too long. You can see it is good news but you can also see it is bad news. If we have to go back to a car that has been competitive three/four months ago, then surely it cannot be good news if you think about it. For us on the technical side it is important to understand what went wrong.”

The four-time world champion spoke about why it had taken Ferrari so long to realise what the problem was and how to rectify it.

“It is a bit hard to explain,” he elaborated. “Certainly we felt that the car was not as strong as it was before, but if you don't see there is anything wrong, then you don't know that there is something wrong.

“All the steps that we did, they seemed to make sense but now looking back they didn't. Clearly there was something we missed, and we haven't understood yet why and where the error exactly took off or started. So there is a lot of stuff for us to do and understand, but I am pretty sure we will do what is necessary to get on top of it.”

Sebastian also agreed that the rest of the decisions the team made were not helping either. More recently, he lost out in Japan during qualifying when he was sent out on full wet tyres and ended up starting ninth on the grid. According to the German, the mistakes not only cost the team during race weekends, but also hid the underlying problems as well.

“For sure. Once the shit hit the fan it didn't get better. There were too many of those incidences. I don't believe in luck or bad luck but surely here or there things didn't go our way entirely, but that is how it is.”

Despite acknowledging his own mistakes, Vettel also believes that the upgrades on the car warranted some of the blame for Scuderia being unable to directly challenge Silver Arrows on track.

The German explained, “It is not like there is a fundamental problem, and in the end it looks a lot worse than it was. I have no problem admitting the mistakes I've done on top.

“There were some things that happened to us that didn't help us, but the crucial bit has been that for a big part of the season we didn't have the speed to really be there, and then other stuff happens that maybe doesn't help that. There will be a lot of stuff over the winter that we need to review, all of us, including myself.”