Singapore GP: Sebastian Vettel Says 'The Biggest Enemy Is Me' Not Hamilton

Sebastian Vettel finally admitted that Ferrari are themselves to blame for not taking advantage of having possibly the best car on the grid to end Mercedes’ dominance.

The Silver Arrows team have won both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles for the last four seasons without too much of a challenge from any other team. The 2018 season started differently with Ferrari mounting a serious title challenge in a bid to end Mercedes’ supremacy.

But the Maranello-based team are still chasing their rivals as they trail in both the championships. Mercedes are ahead of Ferrari by 25 points and Lewis Hamilton is ahead of Vettel by 30 points.

The German driver could easily have been ahead of his rival had it not been for his costly errors in Azerbaijan, France, Germany and most recently Italy. In the latter two races, he was the favorite to win, but threw it away from strong positions.

After initially blaming Hamilton and his teammate Kimi Raikkonen for his opening lap collision in Italy, Vettel has finally admitted he is his biggest enemy in this title race and not the British four-time world champion.

It’s almost unanimously accepted on the grid that Ferrari have the faster car, but driver error and poor strategy calls have seen them being outsmarted by Mercedes. Vettel is confident they can wipe out the deficit if they put the spotlight back on the team and focus on having clean races with minimum error.

“I think it is pretty straightforward for me. I think the biggest enemy is me. We have a great car, I have something to play with and we have all the chances to do it in our way,” Vettel said Thursday ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix, as quoted on F1.com. “Obviously Lewis is the leader at the moment, he’s the one ahead and he is the one to beat, but I think we have all the chances — and how much they could be better by now and so on is a different question."

“We still have a very good chance, and as I said, we will be our first enemy and not him as a person or them as a team. I think we need to look after ourselves. If we do that we have a good chance to do well and win races and things look good,” he explained.

There was another development ahead of the race in Singapore with Ferrari announcing that Raikkonen will leave the team at the end of the season. Ferrari academy driver Charles Leclerc, who is driving in his debut campaign with Sauber, will replace the Finn as Vettel’s teammate in 2019.

The four-time world champion, who has partnered Raikkonen since joining Ferrari 2015, praised the Finn and hailed him as the best teammate he has ever had. Vettel admitted it was not about the results they garnered for the team, but the respect they had for each other that made it special.

It was always known that Vettel and Raikkonen shared a good relationship and he revealed that it was only possible because there was no “bull---t” between the two — it was always straight forward.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Vettel said when asked if Kimi was the best teammate. “One thing you can express in numbers and results, but that's not the most important thing. The most important thing if you are team-mates is the respect you have for each other.”

"Probably the degree of bull---t going on between each other and with Kimi it's been zero from the start and I don't think it won't change until the end. It's a great chance for Charles, but also it's sad to know that Kimi is not there anymore because we get along very well even though we are different and have this mutual respect for each other,” he added.