Sebastian Vettel got his first taste of Red Bull Racing's RB8 in Jerez but, despite being at the right end of the timesheets, is not about to start making predictions of success.
Despite admitting that it was too early to read much into the relative performances of
Red Bull and its rivals during the opening four days of testing in Spain, world champion
Sebastian Vettel had a knowing look in his eye.
The German took over from team-mate
Mark Webber for the final two days of the
Jerez test and was immediately mixing it with the rest of the pacesetters. Although Nico Rosberg, in the 2011-spec Mercedes, and Romain Grosjean, in a low fuel Lotus, put in runs that were beyond the more conventionally set-up RB8, Vettel was happy with his initial performance.
The final day did not go quite as well, with the #1 machine sitting out a large part of the early running after an electrical gremlin forced the team into a precautionary engine change, but he worked his way back up the order after rejoining the fray, ending the day third overall once again.
"It feels good, believe me," he told the official F1 website after completing his first runs in the new car, "It's about time that we go racing again, [and] it's like being home."
Despite being satisfied with his own performances, however, Vettel admitted that he was not about to start predicting fortunes for the season ahead.
"If I were a psychic, I would be able to tell you right away, but I am not," he smiled, "I have done 96 laps and that is definitely not enough to figure out something as complicated as an F1 car. All I can say is that I feel comfortable and the gut feeling seems to signal green."
"It is definitely too early to say anything [about how RBR compares to the opposition]. When you go out at the right time, with the right tyres and low fuel, you can set a good time. My guess is that [at the next test] in Barcelona, we will see what the other cars are made of.
"You cannot go into a season on staged test lap times. I think that teams that are able to do a lot of mileage without issues will be in good shape. Lotus look pretty good from what I've seen. They've been fast and showed a consistently good performance.
Ferrari and
McLaren are the big question marks - and maybe so are we...."
Asked to describe the difference between the RB7 that carried him to his second title in 2011 and the RB8, which has had to be designed to take into account of various regulation changes, he admitted that he still had to learn all the nuances of the latest machine.
