Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton believes that rivals Ferrari has the quickest car in race specification, following Friday’s pair of practice sessions for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Mercedes and Ferrari have been closely matched across the opening two rounds of the season, with Sebastian Vettel triumphing in Australia before Hamilton hit back in China.
Hamilton finished only fifth during the low-fuel runs in second practice at Sakhir, after a couple of compromised runs, as Vettel led the way during both the first session, held in hot temperatures, and Friday evening's twilight running.
“It was incredibly hot early on, with some of the very toughest conditions – both physically and in terms of working with the tyres,” said Hamilton.
“We got through that and then it was much cooler in the afternoon, giving us a much better representation of what qualifying and the race will be like.
“I was able to get a much better understanding of where the car is in FP2. It was very close, with Ferrari fastest.
“In race trim they seem a couple of tenths quicker, so I'm expecting a great battle tomorrow and then again on Sunday. We'll work as hard as we can to try to close that gap.”
Team-mate Valtteri Bottas finished just 0.041s behind Vettel to wind up second quickest overall.
“It seems like the same trend continues here with it being so close with Ferrari,” said the Finn.
“But Red Bull are looking good too and the whole pack is pretty close, if you look at the top six particularly.
“It looks like every little thing that we are going to be fine tuning today with the setup and anything extra we can find is going to be crucial for qualifying and the race.”
