Newey Believes that the Pressure is on Vettel

Red Bull’s Adrian Newey believes Sebastian Vettel is feeling every bit of the pressure in his 2018 title challenge.

Newey was the technical mastermind behind Vettel’s four World Championships when the German was racing for the Red Bull team.

Newey, then, has a great understanding than most on Vettel’s mindset and said that he is a driver who feels the pressure because of how much hard work he puts in.

“Sebastian works incredibly hard and hardly anyone is more self critical than he is,” Newey told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

“If he has a weakness, it’s that he can make stupid mistakes in the heat of the moment. If he leads he is almost unbeatable.

“But people deal with pressure differently. In the car, he is responsible not only for himself, but for the entire team. Some drivers are not bothered, like the Finns.

“But there are others who really feel the pressure weigh on them at the end of a world championship.

“The harder a driver works, the more he feels the pressure. That’s particularly true of Seb.”

Newey is now pessimistic on Vettel’s title chances this season, with the Ferrari driver 40 points behind Lewis Hamilton with six races left in the 2018 campaign.

“If he’s going to manage it, he needs at least one retirement from Lewis. Otherwise it’s going to be damn hard,” he added.

So far, Vettel has been let down by several mistakes of his own doing. It has left teammate Raikkonen flying the Ferrari flag on the podium on a number of occasions. Singapore was supposed to be a track where Ferrari thrived in. Things began to go horribly wrong for them in qualifying when they were struggling on the hypersofts.

Then, during the race, a misinterpretation of an intercepted Mercedes radio set the mode into self-destruct. Then Ferrari got it wrong when they sent out Vettel on hypersofts, while the rest of the leaders fitted the softs. What made matters worse was the fact that he emerged behind Sergio Perez and wasted precious seconds getting past the pesky Force India. But the damage was done, Max Verstappen was able to jump him in the pits and into 2nd.