Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel seemed relatively pleased with his first day behind the wheel of the RB9 in Barcelona yesterday. The triple world champion ended up 4th on the timesheets, being overtaken by Nico Rosberg, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso in the closing stages of the day’s running, and managed 66 laps of the Spanish circuit.
The German was quick to admit that the latest design by Adrian Newey wasn’t as radical as come of the other cars to hit the track this season.
“What we have here is more or less the car we had in Brazil, just another step forward,” stated Vettel, ”I think we improved the car a lot last season though so I’m much happier this year here than I was last time.”
He added, “We have done a lot of improvements so you cannot compare to the car we had one year ago.”
With limited regualtion changes going into the 2013 season, Red Bull have a strong opportunity to be the team to beat from the first race, and Vettel reinforced that by proclaiming he was in a better place than with the eventual championship winning car, the RB8.
“I think we have been in good shape today. I’m quite happy with the car and the balance, and quite a bit happier than how we started last year.”
“This circuit has always been a good indicator of whether you have a good car or not,” said Vettel, ”but at this stage it’s still very difficult to judge what we do compared to the rest.”
“To be honest we’re not that bothered. We have plenty of stuff going on in our garage.”
Photo: @CraigNormanF1
