Vettel: Red Bull Must Refocus After Ferrari Win
Written by She Ng on Wednesday, July 13th, 2011
In post-grand prix comments to Red Bull’s own people/website, Sebastian Vettel is urging the team to learn lessons from the British Grand Prix and to “refocus” for the two races coming before Formula 1?s summer break.
Alonso made the most of updates to the Ferrari car and a crucial mistake from Red Bull in the pits to get ahead of Vettel into the lead of the British Grand Prix, and was then able to take a victory that allowed him to return to the top step of the podium for the first time since the inaugural Korean GP in October last year.
Despite his victory, Alonso remains a whopping 92 points behind Vettel in the championship standings while Ferrari has scored only half the points of Red Bull in the constructors’ championship, with McLaren splitting the two teams in the standings.
“It was a lesson to learn,” Vettel told Red Bull Racing’s website. “It is now up to us to refocus and to come back stronger in the next two races.
“It is a very important time now for the championship.”
“It was a tough race and Ferrari were very quick, Fernando in particular,” Vettel said. “We need to accept this and to understand you get beaten. We are in a good position still but we need to keep working otherwise the others will get too close for our liking.”
Do you think there is anything Vettel should be doing right now to pull his team together, beyond putting pictures of his engineers on his helmet? Is this a moment where he needs to step up or is the British GP just one race, and a race Vettel easily could have won if you do the usual “if this, and if that, then this” calculations?
Vettel leads the championship by 80 points with 10 races to go but fears Ferrari are capable of closing the gap.
But there is a subtle line between rallying the troops to push on and being hysterical that things have gone wrong. I’m sure he’s on the right side of that divide, but — since there seems to be a consensus that Vettel hasn’t yet faced real pressure — maybe it is something to watch during July.
The season resumes with back-to-back races at Germany’s Nurburgring on 24 July and, a week later, the Hungaroring on the outskirts of Budapest in Hungary.
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