He believes he has the vehicle, the talent and the form to outpace both Ferraris and his Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo in Sunday’s race at the Hungaroring and in the title chase.
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Under normal circumstances the Red Bull pair, along with Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez, and Williams’ Valtteri Bottas, who also advanced beyond Q1 without lapping close enough to Nico Rosberg’s benchmark time, would have been demoted down the grid.
But the Dutch wunderkid was not to prove a problem this week, suffering the sort of luckless race that has bedevilled Ricciardo this season. He ended the day nearly two seconds ahead.
“But at the start of the second stint, with the soft, we seemed really competitive but in the end it looked like Mercedes was doing what they needed to do and their pace got stronger and stronger”.
However, a few laps later the Ricciardo danger had passed as The Red Bull got caught behind slower cars and the tyre advantage waned.
But he pitted fairly early for fresh tyres and while unable to get within striking distance of the Mercedes duo again, faced a challenge from Vettel’s Ferrari, running on fresher rubber, for third place.
Asked if the situation was similar to the Spanish Grand Prix when Kimi Raikkonen finished a close runner up the Max Verstappen, Vettel said: “Probably”.
Having been forced to settle for fourth place in Hungary it marks the third consecutive race Vettel has missed the podium, making it his longest stretch since joining Ferrari in 2015.
“We’re looking pretty good, we’d like to be a bit closer to Mercedes but at the moment we’re sitting sort-of second best, a bit quicker than Ferrari today, so we are more or less where we expected to be”.
“If Max wants to buy something big, he must get permission from us first”, Verstappen’s father Jos Verstappen, a retired F1 driver, told the newspaper.
“Thanks to the team, we are continually getting better so that’s great and, yeah, i’m having fun”.
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It meant Hamilton scored another victory ahead of Rosberg and most importantly for the Briton, puts him into the lead of the world championship for the first time this season.
