01/03/2017
NEWS STORY
After three, fairly successful, days of testing, of which he has been at the wheel for two, Sebastian Vettel insists that it is far too early to start drawing conclusions.
While today he completed a further 139 laps, to add to the 129 completed on Monday, the four-time world champion insists there is not enough information available yet for him to have a clear picture.
"It's a lot, but never enough," he said. "That's what testing is for, to give you an idea. And the idea is that these cars, as a result of the new regulations, are very different to last year, in the way they look and in the way of driving them.
"We are more or less at the performance levels of ten years ago," he continued, "with a lot of aerodynamic downforce, but also with quite a lot more weight. They are also more physical and at the end of the day, you feel tired, but this is normal for the first outing since the winter break.
"The tyres are also different and they behave more consistently. We have seen more or less what we expected: the cars are quicker in the corners and slower down the straights, because of the drag. But they are also great fun to drive.
"It's too early to understand the available potential," he insists. "We focused on our programme, without paying the slightest attention to what the other teams were doing.
"All winter we have prepared so as to get here in the best possible shape. But there are still around four weeks to go to the first race and there is much work to do, so much in our programme.
"The stop towards the end doesn't bother me," he added referring to the incident when he stopped on the main straight ten minutes before the end of the session bringing out the fourth red flag of the day. "We were trying something that didn't work, that's all."