Sebastian Vettel says he would speak out if he felt Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc was getting preferential treatment at the team.
The four-time world champion was comprehensively outperformed by Leclerc at the last two races at Silverstone in recent weeks, with Vettel scoring a single point over the two rounds to Leclerc's 27. The pace differential remains a mystery to Vettel and at the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix last weekend he also said that his race strategy did not make any sense.
Vettel's poor performances have added extra strain on his relationship with Ferrari, which is due to end in 2021 after the team announced in May that he would be replaced by Carlos Sainz next year. Vettel, who wanted to remain at the team, later revealed he had not been offered a contract renewal despite the team saying he would be their number one choice for 2021 at the start of the year.
Asked ahead of this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix if he still felt he and Leclerc were getting equal treatment, Vettel said: "At the moment I would think so. If not, I would say otherwise."
He added: "I am not trying to get into any of this. I am just trying to do my job. Obviously at the moment it's not plain sailing and all calm, it's a rather rough sea, but it is what it is.
"I have to do the best I can, which is staying focused and waking up in the morning trying to do the best I can and being fairly open-minded and trying to tackle it.
"I didn't have great weekends at Silverstone -- normally a track I really like. Didn't get into a great feeling with the car and wasn't able to extract as much as Charles was for whatever reasons. There's not much I can do other than doing my job and working together with the guys around and my car to make sure we get the best package together."
Vettel will use a new chassis this weekend after Ferrari found a crack in his previous one, which may have impacted on the handling and performance of the car. But the 33-year-old said it wasn't yet clear if it would solve all his performance-related problems.
"I think time will tell. Obviously, in our businesses you're measuring a lot of stuff, you put a lot of sensors on the car and normally you get a lot of answers but sometimes you don't get the answers you like, and other times you're not getting an answer at all.
"Pretty much a reflection of life as well where sometimes you're looking for an answer but you might not get one as well. It's important to trust in your feeling -- the feeling that obviously as a driver you get when you drive the car, with what you can do and can't do.
"Trust in yourself and keep going forwards, and I think that's one of those situations that we are in. We might get an answer, we might never get an answer but ultimately it doesn't matter, it doesn't change anything in how we progress from here."