Sebastian Vettel is confident Red Bull will again be a competitive force as the season resumes on the streets of Valencia – but admits it has to wait and see how its rivals shape up before seeing what it can achieve this weekend.

After beginning to take large chunks out of Brawn’s once huge championship leads with two successive 1-2s before the last round in Hungary, Red Bull was then surprisingly beaten by the resurgent McLaren and Ferrari teams at the tight and twisty venue in the race despite qualifying in strong second and third places.

Vettel believes the RB5 has the potential to be in the front-running mix on all types of circuit so, from his point of view, says the unknown heading into this weekend is how strong its rivals are on the fast, open street track.

“We prepared ourselves as usual for here,” he told reporters on Thursday. I think, independent from the type of circuit, we have a good car so we should be fairly competitive here as well. The question is how competitive will the others be. Circuit wise I do like the circuit, I enjoy it very much, and competitive-wise we have been good here last year [with sister team Toro Rosso] so we will see. It’s a nice circuit, I enjoy it, so I am looking forward.”

Although RBR’s winning run came to an end at the last round, the team still conclusively stayed ahead of title rival Brawn to close to within 15.5 points in the constructors’ championship. Asked if he thought it could maintain that advantage following the month-long summer break, Vettel said it would largely rest on whether Brawn had resolved its own recent car difficulties – acknowledging that neither title contender could afford to not perform at its best given the competitiveness of the entire field.

“I think it depends mainly on them,” the German star said. “Maybe in the last two or three races they didn’t get their things together and obviously this year it’s extremely crucial to perform always at your top, the cars are very tight. We have seen at the last race what can happen. I think on the Thursday [in Hungary] no one expected McLaren-Mercedes to be that strong, as well as Ferrari, and on Sunday they were quite dominant and even quicker than we, or Brawn, have been in the last races.”

Vettel himself heads into the final seven-race sprint having fallen behind team-mate Mark Webber as Button’s nearest rival in the drivers’ championship after retiring from the Hungaroring with car damage.

“For us [Red Bull drivers] it has been more or less even [during the season],” Vettel said. “Now Mark is 4.5 points ahead, but there is still a long way to go and you have seen how quickly things can change. In Hungary, obviously, turn one was not the best for me with all the KERS cars attacking and then very quickly you lose ground. On top of that we had the failure with the car, so it doesn’t help if you are about to collect a lot of points. So we will see. There are still some races left – but for both of us, every race counts.”
Source: ITV