Part of Sebastian Vettel’s struggle so far in 2014 is “fatigue” after four consecutive world championship triumphs.<\/p>\n
That is the view of Gerhard Berger, a former Ferrari and McLaren driver but also someone who knows Vettel well, having given the German his first full-time F1 seat in 2008 when a Toro Rosso co-owner.<\/p>\n
So far in 2014, wearing the coveted number ‘1’ on his Red Bull for the fourth consecutive time, Vettel has usually struggled even to match the pace of his fresh-faced new teammate Daniel Ricciardo.<\/p>\n
“You have to congratulate Ricciardo,” Austrian Berger told APA news agency.\u00a0 “He does an excellent job, and so consistently right from the start which is not something expected.”<\/p>\n
Behind Ricciardo’s shining performances, however, is a Vettel-factor, Berger argued.<\/p>\n
“We cannot forget that Vettel has won the championship four times; after four times with this pressure there is a certain fatigue that eventually makes its presence felt.<\/p>\n
“Four times you win everything,” Berger explained, “and then you get a car that you know you cannot win the race with due to engine performance.\u00a0 This is very hard to deal with.<\/p>\n
“Ricciardo is pleased about a podium but Vettel is not interested in third place; he wants to win the world championship,” he added.<\/p>\n
Red Bull and Vettel have upped their pace recently, but Berger doubts that Mercedes can be challenged this year — and he points the finger mainly at Renault.<\/p>\n
“Mercedes has had a great engine for years,” he said, “but Red Bull has been able to compensate with Vettel and the aerodynamics.<\/p>\n
“If Renault wants to catch up now, they will need to upgrade their budget and their people.\u00a0 We can’t forget about the resources that are behind Mercedes,” added Berger.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Part of Sebastian Vettel’s struggle so far in 2014 is “fatigue” after four consecutive world championship triumphs. That is the view of Gerhard Berger, a former Ferrari and McLaren driver but also someone who knows Vettel well, having given the German his first full-time F1 seat in 2008 when a Toro Rosso co-owner. So far …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[1096,5262,5340,258,129,164],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21929,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21928\/revisions\/21929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}