Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel is confident his team can find more pace in the car for Saturday as they were the lesser team in Friday's practice session compared to Mercedes, who were a whopping eight tenths ahead.
Vettel only mustered a P5 in FP1 on Friday morning at Suzuka behind his teammate Kimi Raikkonen in P4, before the German jumped to P3 in FP2 in the afternoon, still a long way behind Mercedes.
During the sessions, Vettel was heard a lot on the team radio, complaining about the car sliding way too much, which caused the tyres to degrade at a rapid pace. Still, Vettel was satisfied with the work Ferrari put in in Japan on Friday.
"All in all I'm satisfied," the four-time champion told TheCheckeredFlag.
“As I think this Friday has been a smooth one for us, but we aren’t fast enough yet.
“Today we tried something with the car, which seemed to give a better feeling, so let’s see if we can carry this over tomorrow and find something else, too.
“Today I think the car slid a little bit too much, thus damaging the tires, but I believe that, overall it was a clean session with no interruptions.”
A bad sign for Ferrari is that Mercedes have climbed the top step of the Japanese Grand Prix the last four times. However, Suzuka is known to favour the overall strong engines, rather than straight-line circuits like Monza or heavy downforce circuits like Monaco. Ferrari are believed to have the best engine overall, so don't count them out just yet, despite the deficit they seemed to have on Friday.
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