Sebastian Vettel🅰 thinks Ferrari can recover from being beate♏n in qualifying by Mercedes with stronger race pace.

Veﷺttel qualified in third, over half a second off Valtteri Bottas' pole lap, but having seen both Ferrari drivers look more competitive in the free practice sessions yesterday including Vettel topping FP2 the Ferman driver remains encourageꦆd despite being unable to convert it into qualifying success, with Kimi Raikkonen in P5 and another two tenths back.

Nevertheless, he said the session was positive, “I think it was a good sessi🃏on but a bit of a shame to be that far back in qualifying,” Vettel said. “Tomorrow we will see with race pace I think we can ♚be a bit closer but they have been very, very strong.

“Valtteri obviously ha💜d a mega lap so congratulations to him but it should be a fun race. Overtaking is not alwa🥀ys straightforward but not impossible so we’ll see.”

Vettel also says Mercedes has had a very dominant🐲 weekend but that he had been expecting Hamilton, not his teamꦕ-mate, to take the final pole position of the year.

“Yesterday and this morning I was quite co༺nfident that Lewis in particular was very quick, like in FP3, and should get more in the direction of yesterday but it was more the other way around,” he said. “Mercedes in general were very quick, Valtteri put in a mega la❀p so the gap was bigger than I expected.”

Looking over the 🥃long-run pace makes the Ferrari look more competitive with Mercedes, so Vettel remained opt🎉imistic about the race.

“For tomorrow 🍌though I 🏅think the gap will shrink, I hope so anyway, then we will see what we can do.”