Vettel admits to being off his game in 2018

Sebastian Vettel has admitted that he was not at the top of his game during the 2018 season. Having fought closely with Lewis Hamilton up to the halfway stage of the season for the championship, Vettel couldn't keep up in the final stint of the season and ultimately lost to his rival.

Hamilton took 11 race victories on the way to his fifth championship title, some of which in races Vettel himself should have won comfortably.

Speaking to media after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and reflecting on his campaign, the Ferrari driver admitted that several high profile mistakes cost him in the fight for the world title.

"Naturally, the year I've had, I don't think I ever any problems raising my hand if I made a mistake.

"Knowing how quickly things can go wrong, how quickly things could have gone differently this year, I have to review a couple of things, but there's other things that I think went wrong and don't need a lot of reviewing and not over-complicating things too much.

"I think I know what I need to do. Certainly, here and there, looking back I haven't been at the top of my game.

"So, I look at myself first, I think I can be better than I was at times this year."

Contact with Valtteri Bottas at Paul Ricard, crashing out of his home race from the lead and several late-season spins in wheel-to-wheel combat may have put the nail in the coffin for his title hopes but Ferrari's ill-judged development of the SF17H is what the German points to as a costly error.

"We did a step back towards the end of the year which enabled us to be more competitive again, but I think we've understood what went wrong.

"I think we had a lot of lessons, it was a tough year in general. I think the team is strong and the team has potential but surely it was a lot of things that happened inside the team.

"The passing of our chairman, Mr (Sergio) Marchionne obviously had an impact and was tough.

"It's up to us to look into every single detail and make sure we come out as a stronger group."

Although both he and his Ferrari team lost out on both championship titles, Vettel said that the team could take a lot of positives from the 2018 season despite the result.

"We also had a lot of races where we got everything out of the car and the package and I felt that I did everything I could. I was happy with that.

"For now I need a bit of time just to shut things down. We have a little bit of time to digest and analyse.

"I don't think I need to change things upside down but certainly I can adjust and get stronger."