Ferrari has accepted that Mercedes has a “slightly better car” in Formula 1 this year but reckons the points gap between the two teams has been exaggerated.
Ferrari and Mercedes were closely-matched pre-season with estimations putting the Maranello-based squad marginally ahead.
But Mercedes controlled proceedings in Australia, China and Azerbaijan, while an engine issue on Charles Leclerc’s car denied it victory when it held a performance advantage in Bahrain.
Mercedes’ streak of 1-2 finishes, allied to a handful of other setbacks for Ferrari, has left the reigning World Champions 74 points ahead of its opponent in the Constructors’ Championship.
“I think that obviously four races in the season, no win for Ferrari, four wins for Mercedes, no doubt they are very strong,” said Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto.
“Certainly they’ve got a slightly better car, but I think that the gap is not so big and the points of the result are not reflecting the true potential of the cars.
“In Azerbaijan, we had the potential for pole, and if you’ve got a car fast enough to score potentially the pole, you’ve got a good car overall.
“In the race, yes, we weren’t as fast as them, but we didn’t finish 20 seconds behind.
“I think that Sebastian [Vettel] somehow at the end of the race was somehow quite close, and if you look at the delta lap time average on the race, somehow it is significant but still little, and I think it’s something on which there is much to try to work and then to close in the near future.”
Ferrari brought a raft of minor updates to Azerbaijan – its first substantial batch of new parts of 2019 – and Binotto was pleased with their respective performance.
“The updates work as expected,” he said.
“These are only the very first one.
“A few updates are expected as well in the next races, so we will not stop here.
“Our hopes definitely are that we can do a better job in the future.”
