Lewis Hamilton admits Ferrari looks to have the upper hand on Mercedes after Sebastian Vettel topped both practice sessions ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Vettel and Hamilton are locked at 43 points piece at the head of the drivers’ standings after their respective victories in Melbourne and Shanghai.
It was the German, though, who drew first blood on Friday, with Hamilton only fifth in FP2 after a mistake spoiled his first effort on the super-softs and traffic curtailed the next.
As such, there was no representative lap-time from the Mercedes driver, but his rival seemed to have the edge in the race simulations in the latter part of the session.
“It was very close, with Ferrari fastest,” the Briton told Sky Sports F1. “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.”
Vettel himself, though, was not entirely happy with the day’s running as an electrical issue threatened to bring his FP2 to a premature halt.
After Kimi Raikkonen hit trouble in the first session, reliability will no doubt be a concern for Vettel, as will the renewed threat offered by Red Bull, with Daniel Ricciardo within his tenth of his evening benchmark.
“I think they [Red Bull] looked already a bit stronger earlier today,” he said.
“We had a bit of an issue and we were lucky to recover and get some laps at the end. Overall I think it was OK but we can improve so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
