Weekend Watch: Vettel arrives at Ferrari

The first day at a new job is always pretty exciting.

There’s new people, a new environment, and fresh challenges to motivate you. It must be even better if you’ve got an empty racetrack and 2012-spec F1 car at your disposal.

After spending his entire career to date in the warm bosom of Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel has made the leap to Ferrari for the 2015 F1 season and beyond.

It’s a bold move, with the Scuderia currently in a period of transition, a shadow of the dominant force it was a decade ago.

Ferrari very kindly filmed Vettel’s first Fiorano foray, and beyond the obvious appeal of seeing a four-time world champion ragging a contemporary F1 car, the video offers some interesting insight for F1 nerds.

Firstly, who knew you needed to radio check every corner? It also seems that even on a fun day with an older-spec car, top flight racing drivers can’t help but deliver feedback.

Vettel succinctly delivers information on how aero adjustments behaved in certain corners and tyre degradation over the course of the lap.

Interestingly, Vettel then requests more front-end grip at the apex if he were to run again in order to rotate the car better. Vettel’s ability to rotate the car and get on the power earlier than anyone else – aided by the effects of the now outlawed blown diffusers – was a key ingredient in his dominant speed.

The comment is also interesting as for the last few years Ferraris have lacked front-end bite. Alonso has no problem dealing with a sliding front end, in fact exploiting that is a key element in his style, but the understeer it creates is a large part of Kimi Raikkonen’s struggles in 2014.

Vettel’s requests for more front-end grip will be music to Kimi’s ears, and the two are very good mates. Time will tell if Ferrari can climb back up the grid in 2015, but in the meantime, let us know how you think they’ll go in the comments below.