Vettel: I still believe we have a chance

Vettel has had a strange run misfortune, much of it of his and his team's own doing, which puts him on the backfoot as Hamilton and Mercedes have capitalised from their rival's mistakes.

The four-time F1 World Champion told journalists in Sochi, "We have had races we should have won but didn't and others we won and shouldn't have. Anything is possible. I'm not aiming to win all six races. I'm aiming to win here and then we go to the next one."

The maths are not kind to Vettel's cause and he simply has to beat Hamilton in the next half dozen races, preferably winning as many as he can on the way.

"It is very simple from where we are. We are some points behind and we need to catch up to make sure we stay there. The best way to do that is to finish ahead and ideally ahead of everybody. The plan doesn't change. Obviously, at this point, we try to give it everything we have and I still believe we have a chance."

Ferrari have had the faster car for the latter half of this season, and despite beginning the second stanza of the season on a high with victory at Spa-Francorchamps, but then they faltered in Italy and Singapore where they were expected to win.

The SF71H is a handy piece of kit, and Vettel knows it, "We expect to be competitive, but we have to take into account the last couple of races where we struggled to have the race pace and put it together for different reasons."

"So we need to not get distracted by the results and focus on the job we have to do," added the Ferrari driver who has never won at Sochi in the four years the Russian Grand Prix has been on the calendar.