Vettel aims to beat Mercs, not split them

Sebastian Vettel has made it clear that he doesn’t want to split the Mercedes drivers in Montreal, he wants to beat them both.

The Ferrari driver completed Friday’s running second on the timesheets having split the Mercedes drivers in FP2.

Vettel’s 1:14.469 put him 0.257s behind Lewis Hamilton but almost three-tenths up on Nico Rosberg.

However, P2 is not the target Vettel is striving for at the Canadian GP.

“The car is always very alive here,” he said. “There are some things we can improve, but the car seems to work and gave us what we expected.

“Ideally, we won’t split Mercedes and we will be ahead of them.

“I think they will be quick, not a surprise as it’s a circuit that suits them and they’ve been very competitive these last couple of years.

“In the end we need to do our best and then we see where that will take us. But the closer we can be already from Friday, the better.”