Ferrari: Vettel and Räikkönen ready to be patient in 2015

On the sidelines of the presentation of the Ferrari SF15-T, the Scuderia’s main drivers for 2015, Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen, spoke, particularly highlighting their desire to advance Ferrari without skipping steps.

There are a lot of changes happening, new people in new positions – myself included, so it always takes a bit of time to put everything in place before making real progress, explained the four-time world champion. I am confident that we are moving in the right direction, but it wouldn’t be right to expect too much from us immediately.

Consequently, the preseason goals are modest: « We must remember that we are coming out of 2014 where there was a very dominant team, so it will be very difficult to be there right from the start. For us, the main objective is to begin really working together, to start making progress, hoping to gradually come back more and more during the season. »

Is it possible to consider a victory after a success-free 2014 season? « I think we would be happy [to win a race], but obviously, we would be even happier to win more. As I said, we have to be realistic. »

The most important thing is that we are on the pace quickly during private testing and that we start making progress. If the situation is like last year, it will be very difficult to fight for victories, but obviously that’s our goal. That’s why we are here; we are not here to be second, finishes Vettel.

On Kimi Räikkönen’s side, the same caution prevails: “Obviously, we want to be as strong as possible, but it is too early to say where we are going to be. As long as we do our work at 100%, work as a team to move forward and continue to build throughout the winter, that’s the starting point. Then the results should come.” The Finn doesn’t even want to set goals: “From my point of view, there’s no point in having goals for now: let’s start from the first tests and move forward from there.”

The duo formed by Vettel and Räikkönen consists of two friends who regularly see each other outside the paddocks. Iceman hopes their collaboration will help Scuderia return to the forefront: It will be interesting to work with [Vettel], but I’m sure we will have a good understanding of each other. The goal is to advance the team and do everything for Ferrari and then, obviously, we will try to compete against each other, but in a good way.

Above all, he hopes to erase 2014, which turned out to be his worst season since his F1 debut: « Sometimes, you have years like that, everything seems to be a bit difficult. We figured out a lot of things and hope that this year we can turn things around, be strong as a team, and gradually get back to where we need to be. »