Hamilton: Ferrari Are Better Than Showing In Melbourne

Lewis Hamilton is keeping himself and the Mercedes team in check warning that Ferrari’s real pace wasn’t demonstrated in Melbourne.

Despite the Silver Arrow driver showing immense pace in Q3, Vettel’s Ferrari went on to win the race and this still wasn’t enough for Hamilton to be sure Ferrari are at their peak.

Hamilton said: “Everyone’s talking about our ‘party mode’ and how much quicker we are (but Raikkonen) was very quick in the first stint - was not easy at all to pull away from him.

“In my mind, I was racing Sebastian. The Ferraris are always going to play one off the other, there’s two of them.

“They’ve got two aces or whatever two jokers. You pit one guy which forces you to protect yourself on the undercut, but the other guy’s in the clear and in my mind, I was like ‘Just look out for number three’ as that’s who I think I was racing.”

Raikkonen finished 0.664 behind the leading Mercedes in qualifying but the current World Champion was quick to bat this away suggesting Ferrari aren’t that far behind.

“Kimi drove fantastically well, he was generally quick all weekend. I am not convinced Sebastian did a good lap. I think their performance is better than what it looked.

“Everyone in the (Mercedes) team is feeling it, but there’s been so much great work, so much positivity to take forward with us.

“We’ve got a great car and we are still the world champions and with a couple of adjustments, we can win the next race. I believe that.”