Sebastian Vettel admits he is yet to find the “sweet spot” in his Ferrari Formula 1 car followiඣng Friday practice for the Chܫinese Grand Prix. 

Vettel heads into this weekend with a 17-point championship lead over Lewis Hamilton after making a perfect ꦍstart to the new season with back-to-back wi෴ns in Australia and Bahrain. 

Despite not being entirely happy with his car’s balance in Australia, the German profited from a fortunately-timed Virtual Safety Car period to leapfrog teammate Kimi Raikkonen and Hamilton on his way to winning the season-opener in Melbourne, before demonstrating supreme ty🌸re-management to hold off a late charge from Valtteri Bottas in Sakhir. 

But after ending up with the sixth (FP1) and fourth (FP2) fastest times in Shanghai practice on Friday, the four-time world champion insistedཧ he has work to do in order to get the maximum out of his Ferrari package in time for qualifying.

“In Bahrain I was a lot happier but here is not yet where we want to be. We are still looking and if anybody has any clever suggestions they’re welcome! I think as I said it’s difficult to find the sweet spot, but if you do th💝en you can unleash the pace. 

“I think the ca🐈r has the pace but we need to make sure we get it to work and today was mixed. I think in the afternoon was a bit better, I was a bit happier but hopefully tomorrowꦦ I am very happy.”

Raikkonen was once again the fastest Ferrari driver on a Friday in 2018, ending second practice just 0.007s shy of pacesetter Hamil♍ton. The Finn said he could have extracted more time out of his quali⛦fying simulation run had he not encountered traffic on what turned out to be his best lap.

“It was OK. I think we had some traffic and for sure we could go faster [over] one lap. Obviously on the long run we never really got good idea where we arꦍe with﷽ the conditions and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”