SEPANG, Malaysia -- Sebastian Vettel believes Mercedes is too far ahead for him to pull off a repeat of last year's victory at the Malaysian Grand Prix this weekend.
Vettel scored his maiden victory for Ferrari in Malaysia last season, but during Friday practice this year was 0.661s off Lewis Hamilton at the top of the timing screens. Although he says Ferrari's aim is still to win on Sunday, he admits that the gap in pace to Mercedes makes it unlikely.
"I think it's right to dream," he said. "That [winning] is what we are here for and nothing less. At the same time you need to be awake and at the moment we are not strong enough to come here and say we will win, but as I said, if the chance comes up with circumstances or whatever happens then, similar to last year, we need to be ready and be there.
"I think we had a couple of races that arguably we could have won and we didn't, so in that regard we didn't do a great job. But now we are looking forward and we have six races where we will try to do our best."
Vettel was 0.432s quicker than the fastest Red Bull in second practice, but he is not ruling out Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo at this stage.
"I haven't seen everything from this session yet. They look very strong on the medium but I don't know what happened to them on the softs. I think we have seen the last couple of races it is pretty close between us and Red Bull, and Mercedes seems to have a bit of an edge."