Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene says it will be a major achievement to beat Mercedes as it is currently the best team of the last ten years.
Mercedes has secured back-to-back world championship doubles having dominated F1 since the introduction of the V6 turbo power unit regulations, and started this season with two wins. With Mercedes' record since the start of 2014 now standing at 34 wins from 40 races, Arrivabene says Ferrari is aware what an achievement it will be if it can end that dominance.
"Concerning [China], it was a good Friday, not a bad one but unfortunately not gaining position on the grid or points in the championship," Arrivabene said. "So, it’s a good start but the weekend is still long.
"Concerning the expectation of the season, I can say the Mercedes team of this year is the strongest one that I saw in the last ten years because it’s quite a lot of years that I’m around and, I mean, to be able to win against them, you have to work and be better than them. So, we are doing all our best to have good results."
Following Arrivabene's comments, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff insisted he is wary of the threat Ferrari will pose this season.
"They are pushing us very hard and you have seen today that it is raw performance and we have seen the performance in the last couple of races," Wolff said.
"Ferrari haven’t been able to pull it together because they made a big step from ’15 to ’16, similar to the step of ’14 to ’15 and in order to have the package rolled properly deliver and be reliable, that isn’t an easy task but in terms of sheer performance, they are really pushing us. And that it good; this is how the competition should be."
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AS IT HAPPENED: Chinese Grand Prix - FP2
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