• British Grand Prix

2012 development race proving 'tricky' - Vettel

Red Bull brought a big update to Valencia © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• British Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Sebastian Vettel

• Teams:
• Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel says 2012 is proving to be one of the most difficult seasons yet for Red Bull after a number of updates have not had the desired effect on the car.

The rear of the Red Bull has been in a constant start of evolution since pre-season testing as the team has tried to recapture some of the downforce lost by the restriction on exhaust-blown diffusers, while continuing to work hard on other areas too. But Vettel said some of the updates have not worked as the team had hoped and that the development race is proving to be one of the most difficult in recent years.

"Obviously everyone lost quite a lot of downforce with the regulations changing this year and it seems to be tricky to get it back," he said. "If you are happy with what you have then sooner or later you will get beaten so we always try to improve the car and it doesn't seem to be as straightforward as previous years. I don't know about the other teams, but for us it was not so straightforward and easy and as I said we pulled some bits that didn't give us the benefit we were looking for."

But Vettel is not sure whether the performance advantage he enjoyed with the updated Red Bull in Valencia was down to the upgrade or other factors.

"We did make a step forward in Valencia that I was very happy about and the team were very happy about. But if you look at the weekend, we had a very good straightforward weekend on my side and a very smooth race up until the point where we had the failure. You don't have that kind of situation every weekend where everything just seems to run and work. So that can make a difference on top of what we did with the car. We need to confirm it here first of all. It's a different track so that's why we have to be patient."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.