'Not our favourite circuit' - Vettel

Sebastian Vettel says that Spa-Francorchamps is not Red Bull's "favourite circuit", but that he still thinks the RB7 will be strong.

Vettel has yet to finish higher than third in Belgium in his career, but team-mate Mark Webber qualified on pole last season and finished the race second to Lewis Hamilton. Vettel admitted in the Thursday press conference at Spa that the long straights did not play to Red Bull's strengths, but that he was confident it would still be competitive.

"It's not our favourite circuit because there are a lot of straights here, more than on most of the other tracks," Vettel said. "There are some corners but they're all in sector two so sector one and sector three are quite difficult; we've seen that in the past. But I think generally we've had a very good car around here, the last two years especially, so I'm looking forward.

"It's a very nice track all in all, and I'm looking forward to the weekend. Surely the last couple of races we know that we might not have been on top of our game but I think we've understood and learnt quite a lot, so we'll see where we are this weekend."

Vettel has won none of the last three races as McLaren and Ferrari show improved pace, and he said that the main reason was the Red Bull's inability to get heat in to its tyres quickly, an area the team has been addressing.

"There are no secrets to reveal. Obviously the last three races were pretty different in terms of conditions, especially the Nurburgring I think was a bit of a surprise with very cold temperatures. Whereas in the past I think we have always been very competitive when it was cold it seemed that we were struggling more than others this year.

"So it's basic homework. It's nothing wrong with the car itself, it's just trying to get everything up to temperature quick enough where we seem to struggle a little bit. I think already for Hungary we made a step forward and now we go from there. Obviously we had no time to test in between so we can only analyse and think about those things that make more sense, but we need to confirm them on the track."

ESPNF1