Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes taking Ferrari threat 'very seriously'

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes will be taking the threat from Ferrari "very seriously" after Sebastian Vettel set the pace in practice for the Austrian Grand Prix.

Vettel was hit by reliability problems throughout both sessions but still managed to set the fastest time of FP2 as he beat Nico Rosberg by 0.011s. With Ferrari also looking closely matched to Mercedes on the long run, when asked if his team saw Ferrari as a serious threat, Hamilton replied: "We always take it very seriously, but the team is probably more focused on it than I am."

Hamilton himself finished the session in fifth place after mistakes on his supersoft tyre laps but says his lack of a representative time doesn't concern him.

"We improved the car for sure through FP1 and FP2, it was generally just with the tyres – there was not a huge amount of grip."

And Hamilton is confident with his own long run pace even if he is unsure how competitive it is compared to Mercedes' rivals.

"It was same old, same old. It was good and relatively consistent. The team asked me to achieve a time and I was confident with what I had. It will be interesting to know what the fuel loads were for everyone else on those laps."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.