Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg expect another fight with Ferrari

Mercedes pair Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are braced for another battle with Ferrari at the Chinese GP with the rejuvenated Scuderia maintaining their challenge during practice in Shanghai.

Hamilton topped both Friday timesheets on the opening day in China but the Englishman’s outright fastest lap times didn’t reflect the fact that Ferrari’s SF15-T car once again demonstrated strong pace relative to the W06 over the crucial longer runs.  

Despite pre-weekend expectations that the cooler conditions of Shanghai would negate much of the tyre-wear advantage that Ferrari held over the world champions en-route to their surprise win at sweltering Sepang a fortnight ago, Kimi Raikkonen impressed on the medium compound in P2’s race simulations and, according to his race engineer, held an advantage of three tenths of a second over Rosberg on the same rubber.

Hamilton, who like Sebastian Vettel completed his race simulation on the quicker soft compound, says Mercedes were expecting Ferrari to remain a threat and confirmed his W06 hadn’t handled as well on the weekend’s more durable tyre.

"It's quite close between us and Ferrari, and Nico's quite quick as well, so I think we definitely have a race like we said we would,” Hamilton told Sky Sports News HQ.

"I don't know how long I went on both tyres, but the prime didn't feel so good. It didn't feel too bad on the option."

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Reflecting the threat Ferrari now appear to be posing to last season’s runaway world champions, Raikkonen and Rosberg became engaged in a race-style duel during their long-run simulations with the Ferrari passing his Mercedes rival down the circuit’s main straight.

Rosberg, having by then switched to the quicker softer tyre, soon passed the Finn again but only after his first attempt at an overtake was empthatically rebuffed. The German reckons the battle could be equally close in Sunday’s race.

"That was definitely quite a tight one! He didn't leave much space in Turn Two,” Rosberg told SSNHQ.

“But okay, fair play, then I got him out in the next couple of corners. It was good racing and on Sunday we might see some similar action."

Although Rosberg, under pressure to respond to his team-mate’s strong start to the season, wound up only fourth in P2 after a mistake on his qualifying simulation, Hamilton outpaced Raikkonen by four tenths to underline Mercedes' significant advantage over a single lap.

"It's looking good. We have an amazing car and we have to have a look at where we are,” Rosberg added. "Of course, on one lap I think we'll be quickest and race pace we need to review now if we are looking okay or not."

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Hamilton, meanwhile, cited his lack of running on Friday at Sepang when mechanical problems intervened for his problems with tyre wear during the last race. However, with no such problems on day one in China, the world champion ominously added: “We've had a full day, which makes a big difference."

Vettel was the Ferrari driver who took advantage of Mercedes' off-colour race a fortnight ago but appeared to be struggling more relative to team-mate Raikkonen on Friday, with the German's day including a spin into the gravel in P2.

Having spoken on Thursday about consolidating their position behind Mercedes, Vettel again cautioned against making any bold predictions for the weekend ahead.

"In general we have a good car, so we can always be quite confident. But it’s still early days. Target number one is to make sure that we arrive behind Mercedes – you have to accept they are very strong. As the season goes on we’ll try to get closer and closer," he said.

Asked if they could challenge Mercedes for pole, Vettel added: "It will be very close. They have been very strong today in all sessions and all the runs and the most important for us is we do a step overnight. There are a couple of things we can improve them, and we’ll see where it takes us."