• Red Bull

Vettel not interested in Ricciardo comparison

ESPN Staff
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Sebastian Vettel has no interest in measuring the first half of his season against Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, saying a comparison would be unfair.

On paper, Vettel has been outperformed in qualifying by Ricciardo on seven occasions in the first 11 races and he currently trails his team-mate by 43 points in the drivers' standings. Vettel did not deny Ricciardo is doing a good job, but said a number of car issues have tipped the balance in his team-mate's favour.

"First of all, I won't argue that he [Ricciardo] is doing a good job," he said. "On my side, I think I have plenty of qualifying sessions where we had some sort of trouble. I don't remember all of them, in terms of what the nature was, but we lost out many times because of that and in the races as well.

"At some times it was obviously getting quite frustrating, but Formula One can be very nice and it can be very brutal as well by not giving you the chance to show what you can do. I'm not interested in comparing too much, because on my side it's not fair to compare.

"Daniel has had a smoother year - I'm not saying perfect year because he's also had some issues - but way less than I had, so it's not entirely fair to compare. That's why I won't argue with that, he did a great job so far."

Asked if the second half of the season would be better, he said: "First of all, I hope we have no issues with reliability. It's clear that the second half won't be smooth for us because we have to pay the price of the first half in terms of use of engine and other components. We have to change them at some stage and obviously we will receive the penalties for that. It's not great from a driver's perspective, but it's part of the rules and part of the game. Other than that, we have already made big progress.

"If you look at the start of the season I was really fighting with the car and the last couple of races were very good. We didn't get it to come together, but I'm sure at some stage we will turn it around and we will be in a happier place."

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