Vettel says McLaren the team to beat at Monza

Vettel's time of 1m24.010s was 0.15s slower than Lewis Hamilton's best from the morning session, and the German admitted he thought that the Woking team had the edge in pace after Friday's running - perhaps due to the 'higher downforce' Monza-spec rear wings the team was using compared to its rivals.

"The car feels good and it looks like McLaren are the ones to beat," said Vettel. "Obviously everyone's [rear wing] is more-or-less the same except McLaren's but we'll have to take a deeper a look and see how quick they are and then make a decision."

Vettel admitted he had been happy with the competitiveness of the RB7 on a track he expected would be more difficult for Red Bull to be dominant on.

"It was an interesting day on a track that usually doesn't suit us but today I think we were pretty happy with the car," he said. "It's difficult to judge because Friday is always a bit of a mess here with traffic so hard to judge.

"The raw laptime you see at the end of the day on a piece of paper. But the car felt good and we have had no problems so I am quite satisfied."

Team-mate Mark Webber agreed adding that he'd had a 'pretty good' day.

"A lot of information to go through - obviously downforce levels, gear ratios, it's a pretty tricky venue in that regard," said the Australian. "The two compounds are behaving pretty well at the moment, we did most of our work in the more important session (P2) on the option, so yeah pretty good day.

"Going okay so we'll see. Did a bit of work today and hopefully that will pay off for us."

Both drivers reported that they had not encountered anywhere near the blistering on its option tyres that the team suffered in Spa, but Webber admitted he had been forced to compromise on set-up to accommodate the new camber limit.

"The tyres look pretty happy around here," he said. "It's not a normal Pirelli situation I would say. It's still hurting a bit but not as much as normal. We will see on Sunday."

Asked if he'd had to compromise on the camber limit, Webber replied: "Yeah. You always have to readjust other things but it's not night and day.

"Obviously Seb and I ran different programmes today, so we will put all the information together tonight and go from there."