Vettel says no time to dwell on German Grand Prix defeat

The world championship leader finished off the podium for the first time this year at the German GP, in a race that has prompted talk he could yet face a challenge for title glory this year.

And although his form over the Nurburgring is something of a mystery, because he has been so dominant earlier on in the campaign, Vettel says that he and his outfit must think only of putting things right this time out.

"We have obviously analysed what happened, but we have to refocus on this race - because we cannot spend our time thinking too much about the Nurburgring and then not focusing on starting the practice tomorrow," said Vettel after arriving at the Hungaroring.

"We finished third and fourth. It is a result which is not a disaster, but we are not happy with it. You can't be satisfied but in a way we have to accept it.

"For here our target is not to finish third and fourth. We want to do better. But we have a couple of things playing around, trying to make the package a little bit more competitive once again."

He added: "We can't change the result of the Nurburgring, but we can change the result here. There is no point trying to find any kind of excuses, the race is done. People who finished ahead of me deserved to be ahead of me, but I am not happy with that. I want it the other way around this weekend."

Vettel says that his poor performance at the Nurburgring was the result of him failing to find the perfect balance - although quite why that happened has not been fully explained.

"It was a tricky weekend with the conditions," he said. "I don't want to blame the conditions or anything, Mark was a bit quicker around the weekend and struggling to feel comfortable in the car, so I could never find a good balance.

"We had not the easiest time and we have understood most of it. When we have more time in the break to look at the Nurburgring again we will do so. It is very hard to say we only had three days."

With McLaren and Ferrari have beaten Red Bull Racing at the Nurburgring, Vettel says he is expecting as tough a fight this weekend as he has faced in recent races - rather than the dominance that his outfit delivered in Hungary 12 months ago.

"Every race is different - the conditions can be very different, the circuits are different," he said. "We were very competitive here last year so we will see, but the car is not last year's car, it is a new car.

"It's a new challenge again, so we see what we can do, but we expect Ferrari and McLaren to be very quick and to be our main rivals.

"Looking over three, four or five races, you can speak of a tendency and you can say Ferrari in particular have improved their pace and they are getting quicker and quicker. Surely they are one of the favourites going into this race."