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Hamilton believes Ferrari threat is no bluff

Lewis Hamilton believes Ferrari will be genuinely competitive in 2017, following eight days of pre-season testing in Spain.

Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen set the best time of anyone at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. His team mate Sebastian Vettel was almost a match for Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas in terms of mileage and reliability.

Of of which means that Hamilton is starting to wonder whether this year's world championship might not be the walk in the park for him that it once seemed.

"They have been doing a fantastic job and I think there's more to come from them," Hamilton said when asked by Motorsport.com for his thoughts on Ferrari's performance. "Their pace this week has been spectacular.

"Red Bull are still there," he added. "I don't know if they brought their upgrade package here this week but usually they bring it for the first race. I expect us to be having a real serious battle with both these teams."

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At times it appeared that the Ferrari could have gone even quicker. Vettel backed off on his flying laps on Thursday and later denied that his team were favourites in 2017.

"I don't know if there are mind games going on," Hamilton said. "Sometimes there have been potentially some teams sandbagging in the past, but I don't really see that as being a benefit to any team.

"Every year in testing the goal is not necessarily to go as quick as you can. It's to find out what you have in the car."

Certainly as far as Hamilton was concerned, Mercedes weren't hiding anything in pre-season testing.

"The time you saw was the time we could do. I didn't feel when I got out that I could have gone faster.

"But of course there are all sort of things that come into play to bring the time down, such as fuel loads, engine modes, those kind of things. The great thing is no one really knows.

"It looks very positive for Ferrari, that's for sure, and I don't think that's a bluff."

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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.