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Vettel quickest on final day

NEWS STORY
19/07/2013

Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets on the final day of the YDT at Silverstone, eclipsing Daniel Ricciardo's time - set on Thursday in the Toro Rosso - by just 0.078s.

Weeks after the three-time world champion was jeered as he ground to a halt whilst leading the British Grand Prix, Vettel set the pace at a test totally revamped in response to the numerous tyre failures that day.

Drivers continued to run the various tyres options available, Vettel, on mediums, ominously 0.698s quicker than the fastest runner on softs.

Once again Red Bull split its running, with GP3 and Renault 3.5 Series driver Carlos Sainz Jr at the wheel in the morning and Vettel purely on tyre-testing duty in the afternoon.

After driving for Toro Rosso yesterday, Sainz Jr moved across to its sister team today and in a busy schedule the young Spaniard worked his way through 35 laps whilst continuing to impress with his obvious pace.

"This has been an incredible opportunity," he said afterwards. "It was not an easy day and the nerves were definitely there. In the end though, it all went smoothly and there were no major issues. I enjoyed the work and tried to do my best in terms of giving feedback to the team. It's a big boost for my self-confidence, but I'm 18-years-old, still very young and still learning. There's a long way to go."

Vettel, getting his first taste of the new compound Pirelli, said the new rubber had performed well. "We had three days of testing with a lot of different drivers in a lot of different cars and no failures," he said, "in conditions that were hotter than the grand prix... so that's good. Obviously, we were very limited on what we could do, but for me there is not that much difference with the tyres. It was good to get in some laps though, good to get a feeling for them and it's always nice to drive at Silverstone."

"Because of the tyre test with Seb we probably had about 2.5 hours of running with Carlos in the morning," added race engineering co-ordinator Andy Damerum, "but we were very satisfied with the work we got through during that period. The team was impressed with his ability to adjust to the car, happy with his feedback and also with his pace.

"As for the afternoon, we were again locked into Pirelli's programme and you can't make any adjustments to the car, so while it wasn't the best balance for Seb, he's an expert at driving round these issues and we got a lot done, 79 laps; over 460km. It's been a useful test and aside from some small problems, which you always get with a test car, we've had good reliability and good performance."

Force India also had two drivers on duty, however, while Adrian Sutil was to set the second best time of the day, completing 99 laps of the Northamptonshire track, James Calado only completed six ass the team focussed purely on rubber in an attempt to claim back the ground lost in recent races.

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