Sebastian Vettel’s last training Friday at Spa-Francorchamps ended quite unspectacularly for the German. With places 14 and 15 in the two sessions, the Aston Martin driver couldn’t pull out any trees – in contrast to teammate Lance Stroll, who surprisingly finished fourth and fifth.
“I didn’t feel very well this afternoon,” Vettel admits to “Sky” at the end of the day. “Maybe the trust isn’t 100 percent there yet, but I think we can take a step forward overnight.”
He does not yet know whether he will then orientate himself towards the more successful Stroll. But: “I think tomorrow there will be a step forward, also from my side and then we will see where we stand.”
Aston Martin had actually planned to try a low-downforce set-up on Friday, which should help on the long straights in the Ardennes. “But then, when the weather changed, we left it,” says team boss Mike Krack to “Sky”. Because in the rainy conditions, more downforce was the safe option.
“Maybe we’ll think about doing that tomorrow, we’ll have to look at that again, but there are no plans at the moment to take any bigger steps,” said Krack.
“The focus is already on the new season”
The weather was the dominant issue on Friday and also affected Vettel’s work: “The track was mostly dry. Then unfortunately it got a bit wetter and ruined the session a bit at the end,” he says. Because you could not collect as much long run data as desired.
“But we’re in the same boat as everyone else,” said the German.
What remains is the hope of a good result in Vettel’s last Spa race. But the German also knows that this could be difficult. Because the AMR22 is not the top car with which you can easily get top 10 results. And that should also apply to the rest of the season.
Because: “The focus is already on the new season,” says team boss Mike Krack. But: “There are updates again. We can’t leave it alone,” he emphasizes. “We don’t want to end the season in ninth place. So we want to try and maybe win a position or two.”
Spa would be a good place to start.