Sebastian Vettel thinks Ferrari can recover from being beaten in qualifying by Mercedes with stronger race pace🍬.

Vettel qualified in third, over half a second off Valtteri Bottas' pole lap, but having seen both Ferrari drivers look more competitive in the free practice sessions yesterday including Vettel topping FP2 the Ferman dr🔯iver rem✨ains encouraged despite being unable to convert it into qualifying success, with Kimi Raikkonen in P5 and another two tenths back.

Nevertheless, he said the session was positive, “I think it was a good session but a bit of a shame to be that far back in qualifying,” Vettel said. “Tomorrow we will see with race pace I think we can b🦋e a bit closer but they have been very, very strong.

“Valtteri obviously 🍃had a mega lap so congratulations ♌to him but it should be a fun race. Overtaking is not always straightforward but not impossible so we’ll see.”

Vettel also says Mercedes has had a𝓀 very dominant weekend but that he had been expecting Hamilton, not his team-mate, to take the final pole position of the year.

“Yesterday and this morning I was quite confident that Lewis in particular was very quick, like in FP3, and should get more in the direction of yesterday but it was more the other way around,” he said. “Mercedes in general were very quick, Valtteri put in a m🎶ega lap so the gap was bigger than I expected.”

Looking over the long-run pace makes the Ferrari look more competitive with Mer🐷cedes, so Vettel remained optimistic abo🦩ut the race.

“For t🐈omorrow though I think the gap will shrink,💮 I hope so anyway, then we will see what we can do.”