Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes v Ferrari 'a real fight this weekend' - Hamilton

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Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes is "going to have a real fight this weekend" based on Ferrari's pace in China.

Ferrari was quickest on the supersoft tyre in FP2 on Friday, with Kimi Raikkonen edging out team-mate Sebastian Vettel by 0.1s. Hamilton was over 0.4s adrift of the fastest time on the same compound and admits both practice sessions left him expecting a major threat from Ferrari on Sunday.

“Definitely on my side it has been a difficult day, but you have those days in terms of getting the balance," Hamilton said. "It’s quite windy today and Ferrari look quite quick. so we have a race.

“I think the numbers are real but we shall see. I haven’t spoken to the engineers but that’s my assumption.

“[I had] a lot of graining on the supersoft and then the medium is OK. That’s the two that I used today. Nothing particularly unusual but the Ferraris are particularly strong so it looks like we’re going to have a real fight this weekend.”

And Hamilton says he still has a lot of room for improvement himself having had two spins during FP1 and also gone off in the afternoon session.

“I definitely don’t have a perfect balance. The balance is not that great at the moment but we’re working on it. Yeah there has been a couple of mistakes today but it has generally been that we had some brake balance issues on the first couple of runs. Ferrari look quick which means we’re going to have a race, which is going to be exciting.”

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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.