22/04/2014
NEWS STORY
Red Bull boss Christian Horner claims that it is Sebastian Vettel's failure to understand the team's 2014 contender that is causing him to lose out.
Ignoring, the problems suffered by both drivers in Melbourne, Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix saw Vettel beaten by new teammate Daniel Ricciardo for the second successive race.
Furthermore, in a move which will have given grist to the mill of various sections of the media the German was none too happy when asked to allow the Australian by on Sunday. Querying the call to let Ricciardo past, the world champion was advised that he was on fresher tyres. "Tough luck!" was the tetchy response.
Nonetheless, a few corners later the German appeared to move aside for his teammate, trailing him home to take fifth, fifty seconds behind winner Lewis Hamilton, and a fastest lap 0.7s slower than his own teammate.
"Seb is having a tough time at the moment because he can't get that feeling from the car that he is looking for," said Horner. "He's tremendously sensitive to certain aspects of the set-up and he's not getting the feedback from the car that he wants.
"The compound effect of this is that he's damaging the tyre more, which is very unusual for him, as we've seen since the Pirellis were introduced. It's highly unusual for him to be going through the tyre life quicker. That's just the culmination of the issues that he's currently got and as soon as we've worked those out he will be back with a bang."
Asked about the German's reaction to his team's request to move over, Horner said: "No driver likes that call, but he abided by it. He's a team player at the end of the day and the one thing you can be assured of is that he will be looking extremely hard at this weekend and this race to understand where the differences are, what he's struggling with and where we can improve. There will be no driver working harder in the three-week gap to bounce back in Barcelona."