Newey: Vettel feeling the pressure of title challenge

Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey believes that Sebastian Vettel is beginning to feel the pressure in the 2018 title fight. Newey, who helped design the cars that Vettel piloted to his four world championships, explained that Vettel's weaknesses were being put on full display as his title challenge has begun to unravel despite arguably being in the fastest car.

Newey told Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Vettel can only perform at the top of his game if everything is perfect and that should his rhythm be disturbed, it can lead to mistakes in his season that have so far been extremely costly for the Ferrari driver.

"Sebastian works incredibly hard and hardly anyone is more self-critical than he is.

"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."

The Red Bull man added that if Vettel was to pull the championship leader back in from the 40 point gap Lewis Hamilton is currently enjoying, he would need a bit of help from Mercedes unreliability to stand a chance.

"If he's going to manage it, he needs at least one retirement from Lewis. Otherwise it's going to be damn hard."