Four times world champion and Ferrari ace, Sebastian Vettel believes that Mercedes are "close to perfection", and that Ferrari needs to improve in order to leap ahead of Mercedes next year.
Speaking to Jonathan Noble of motorsport.com, Vettel said that, "I don't think we're lacking anything,"
"I think we just need to work better."
He went on to say, "I think we are very committed, working very hard but it's not yet on the level that can be achieved.
"Obviously Mercedes have shown that in the last years that you can do better and they've been able to maintain that. I think we are not in that position."
Mercedes claimed a record equaling 6th consecutive constructors' world title last weekend in Japan. While Valtteri Bottas won the race for the Silver Arrows after a rocket start, his championship leader teammate, Lewis Hamilton finished 3rd behind the Ferrari of Vettel. A total points haul of 41 compared to Ferrari's 28, ensured that the drivers' champion will be either of the Mercedes drivers.
Vettel reckons that Ferrari is already performing hard, however, the Scuderia needs to perform better than their German rivals.
The Ferrari driver further commented: "There's still room for improvement,"
"It doesn't start in Mexico - next year."
"Next year starts next year so whatever we can learn this year, I think we've learned a lot about our car, the weaknesses.
"We've improved it but we're still not there so… We've had a strong couple of races but overall I think we're still a little bit behind." said Vettel.
Sebastian also sounded praiseworthy of the way Mercedes operates as a team and remarked that, "Obviously you can't see what they are doing but I think from the outside they are very close to perfection every time they go out on track,"
"So very consistent, very little mistakes. That's certainly also part of what makes them so strong.
"If you clinch the constructors title with four races to go there's a lot of things you do better than all the others.
"If you go into detail then you can argue what their car is maybe doing better than ours but I don't think that's the point overall. It's a team effort." he said.
Ferrari had a very strong pre-season testing, which led to the fans anticipating a very close season ahead, but it all ended up in shambles as the season unfolded. It took the Maranello based team 12 rounds before finally winning its first race of the season at Spa, with the young Charles Leclerc behind the wheel.
Ferrari then brought several upgrades to keep an upper hand over Mercedes, as the red giant went on to win 3 races in a row. The highest point for Ferrari this season was in Italy, where the team finally ended its 9 years long drought, and won the home race, with the Tifosi erupting in celebrations.
Vettel also affirmed that Ferrari didn't lack in any department, all that they require is to just perform a little better.
"As I said, I think we do have the ingredients, we do have the commitment, we do have the intelligence but we just need to do it better.
"It's a lot of small things; it's not one thing that we need to improve,
"It's a lot of small things that we need to do better, every single one of us and that's the only way that we can try and step up. Hopefully they get a bit bored. We will see what happens."
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