Sebastian Vettel says Sergio Marchionne's pre-season targets are not a burden to Ferrari this year.
The Ferrari president challenged the team to be "the team to beat" ahead of the first race of the season as he wants to see progress from 2015. While Vettel could have won in Australia, a strategic error relegated him to third place, and he then failed to start in Bahrain as Kimi Raikkonen took second place.
With Marchionne present in China - where the two Ferraris collided at the start - Vettel says the targets the president has set are shared by the team and do not add extra pressure.
"The president’s words were highly hyped by the media, I read those things a couple of times and he said to us a couple of times too," Vettel said. "I think we’ve been saying the same thing to him, our aim is to win not to finish second, but last year was a good year for us.
"As a team Ferrari had just had a difficult season in 2014, I also had a difficult season, so in many ways it was a good comeback season. Naturally after you finish second you want to win the year after. I don’t remember in Formula One history any team finishing second and saying, 'we want to do exactly the same thing next year', so I think that’s the nature of the sport, trying to win."
And Vettel says the missed opportunities at the start of this season do not concern him because he has faith in Ferrari's potential.
"There’s only one place on the top step, I think we made a lot of progress over the winter, we didn’t have the start of the season we wanted, there was Kimi’s problem in Australia and obviously my engine failure in Bahrain and this is not yet where we want to be. You can say these are the negatives but it’s nothing that shakes me or makes me nervous for the next few races.
"I know that this team is very strong, I know we can improve a lot. I’m a strong believer, I know the potential is there, we just have to put all the ingredients together. Hopefully this will happen sooner than later, but it will happen. I’m sure we’ll be in a stronger position to fight Mercedes hard this year."
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