Vettel: Red Bull is not the favourite

Date published : 15 Apr 2010 - 13:30:46

Sebastian Vettel says Red Bull's one-two at Sepang is no guarantee that it will be dominant in China this weekend as well.The German reckons that it will be impossible for a single team to take a stranglehold on the world championship battle this year, and that it is McLaren - not Red Bull - that is the pre-race favourite at Shanghai thanks to its F-duct system."I don't think there is too big a gap between us and the others," said Vettel."If you take Malaysia, obviously we were in a bit of a luxury position because some of the other top teams failed in qualifying and were not near the top."I think the race would've probably been a bit different if we had all started at the front. "McLaren looked very competitive in Malaysia and were probably similar to us."It's not like we have a massive advantage like some teams had four or five years ago."If you look at the world championship ranking, there's no gap - we are behind."We have to catch up, so I hope we keep going as we did at the last race."He suspects the straightline speed boost McLaren will get on the long backstretch at Shanghai could make it tough to match."At this track there is a very long straight so I think the McLarens will be quite strong again," Vettel said."It's quite clear that on the sectors where you have more straights, you tend to lose more to a McLaren."Red Bull is already working on its own F-duct, and Vettel believes the whole field will eventually have to adopt the system - but warned against rushing it into use."Even if you have a midfield car, it's something you have to have, because it's worth quite a bit," he said."It's probably up to 0.5s at each circuit."You need to find a lot of new parts that work well to give you half a second advantage per lap in any conditions and no matter what fuel load."So everyone is under pressure to copy and come up with something similar, which is very difficult because McLaren has been planning this for a long time and it's not that easy - even if you have it - to make it work."Right now we don't have a fixed date yet, but we are working on it like everyone else."