The German, whom could win the whole world championship in Japan this weekend, thinks the scale of his team’s advantage is not as huge as his run of four consecutive victories, and a prominent overall performance into the Singapore Grand Prix showed.
“I think there was probably one race that was pretty much an exception, and that was Singapore,” stated Vettel at Suzuka on Thursday.
“The space we created – it was two moments faster [per lap] than the vehicles behind – but that depended on who had been behind us.
“In Korea, and that is much more comparable to Spa, that gap had been someplace between three and six seconds for the entire competition.
“With Schumacher, it was always more like 30 seconds, that is a huge time difference.”
“It’s a good support to have whenever you are three seconds down the track, but one silly error in Korea with a lock up, and that advantage is absolutely nothing in comparison to 30.”
Vettel insists that Red Bull has had to work twice as hard since the summer time break to deliver the overall performance it now enjoys, in which he believes the genuine breakthrough happens to be knocking Mercedes off the starting place in qualifying.
“Our team was always in a place to finish well on Sunday, but lately we have already been strong in qualifying whereas at the start of the 12 months Mercedes surely appeared to have the better hand,” he stated.
“There’s no reason from our side, there isn’t one new component on our vehicle and suddenly it’s just that much quicker.
“Over the past couple of months we have been in a position to enhance the vehicle, therefore showing up in Spa the car was much better than in Hungary.
“I am just certain the other people perform the exact same, but it seems that we have a lot of great components coming in lately.
“Additionally, there’s the element of knowing the car much better in these last few months, and now we can respond faster to replace the set-up the correct way.”
Vettel has to win the Japanese GP, with Fernando Alonso below eighth, to clinch his 4th successive world championship.