Vettel: From Singapore onwards we didn't have the pace

Vettel, who ended the season a distant second to Hamilton, summed up his own downfall in his summary of the year on F1.com, “You reflect not on one moment but the whole year: the work that goes in, the effort that goes in from the end of the last year until now."

"I think we had our chances. We used most of them, some we did not. But in the end, we were not good enough."

“For me, the [crucial point] was Singapore. From there onwards we just didn’t have the pace to keep up with Mercedes for a couple of races. Other things happened on top that didn’t help and we couldn’t score the points due to mistakes we did, mistakes I did,” added the four times F1 world champion.

That weekend in Singapore was memorable for Hamilton's stellar performance in qualifying, probably his best qualy lap ever as he put the Mercedes where it had no place being, a whopping seven tenths faster than his teammate in the sister car.

Hamilton acknowledged the Ferrari challenge in his own review, “To perform this way this year has been the hardest season for me."

"To keep raising the bar and racing against a four-time world champion in a really incredible [Ferrari] team who were so fast this year – most of the time faster than us – and to have pulled together as a team and turned it around has been a real collective effort."

“In general, I just feel content. I don't need anything. I just want to enjoy and harness the feeling. When you think of Fangio, who is for me the godfather of racing drivers, he had five world championships, and now I have five as well. It doesn't feel real,” he added.

Odds are Vettel and Hamilton will slug it out again in 2019, the pair the de facto number one drivers in their respective teams.

Mercedes go into the winter break on an obvious high and again expected to set the benchmark, Ferrari closed the gap before their wayward journey up the garden path and should deliver a good package.

If the Scuderia provide their Vettel with a top car and manage to sustain uninterrupted title campaign until the final race, their ace simply needs to real in the errors to, perhaps, end the dominance of car #44.