Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Lauda: Ferrari will challenge Merc everywhere

Niki Lauda says Ferrari's performance at the Australian Grand Prix shows it will challenge Mercedes throughout the 2016 season.

Mercedes locked out the front row with an impressive performance in Melbourne on Saturday, but its hard work was undone but impressive starts from Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen which saw the pair run one-two for the first stint of the race.

A strategic error from Ferrari during a red flag period proved costly and allowed Nico Rosberg to take victory but Lauda says the pace shown by Vettel and Raikkonen poses a serious threat to Mercedes.

"I’m afraid we will see more of this because Ferrari is quick, no question about it," Lauda said. "It’s going to be exciting and I’m looking forward to the next one."

And Lauda is pleased by Ferrari's challenge as it delivers a positive message for F1 after the debacle surrounding the new qualifying format.

"We had to apologise, which I was asking everybody to do because it was a big mistake. We have apologised so we can forget about it now and we can go to Bahrain.

"Even the communication, which was an issue before the race because more or less everything was forbidden, Charlie understood and eased that one up. Especially in a race like [Australia], where there was so much excitement, can you imagine if you would have heard nothing on the radio? It would have been really boring. So thank God we corrected this one as well."

Australian Grand Prix - Quotes of the weekend

Australian Grand Prix - Driver ratings

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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.