P3 Vettel eyes repeat of Melbourne start

Sebastian Vettel says he will target a repeat of his superb Melbourne start, as the Ferrari driver lines up third for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Having qualified in the same spot in Australia two weeks ago, the German enjoyed a tremendous getaway that saw him rocket past the two Mercedes to lead into the first corner.

Vettel was actually close to split the Silver Arrows on the Sakhir grid until Hamilton secured a record pole position on his final lap to bump the lead Ferrari down to P3.

“I was really happy with my first attempt [in Q3], and my second attempt was more or less copy and paste,” Vettel said. I thought there was a little bit more pace and there was but five hundredths is not enough if [Mercedes] improve by half a second.

“We know we are not where we want to be, but step-by-step we’re getting there. We know what to do. Let’s see what we can do [on Sunday]. We’ll push very hard. Ideally, we do the same thing at the start that what we did two weeks ago. I would not mind.”

Besides Vettel’s three wins, Bahrain was one of the other races where Ferrari represented a genuine threat to Mercedes last year, with team-mate Kimi Raikkonen nearly claiming victory.

The four-time world champion is confident the Scuderia can challenge its title rivals again in Sakhir.

“It’s a long race and there are a lot of things that can happen here. Last year, we saw an interesting race.

“We were very strong. Kimi put a lot of pressure on Nico [Rosberg] at the end and managed to get past. I think we can be in a good shape.

“So high on confidence but whether that’s enough we’ll see. We’ll try to give [Mercedes] a hard time.”

REPORT: Hamilton pips Rosberg to Bahrain pole by 0.077s

AS IT HAPPENED: Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying

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