Hamilton: Mercedes has more pace than Ferrari

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Lewis Hamilton shrugged off the Ferrari threat to Mercedes despite being beaten by Sebastian Vettel during Friday practice in Mexico.

Vettel set the pace in FP2, edging out Hamilton by 0.004s as the triple world champion had three attempts at beating Vettel's time. Despite the pace shown by Ferrari, Hamilton does not believe the Scuderia is any more threatening than at recent races.

REPORT: Vettel edges Hamilton by 0.004s in FP2

“Well practice is practice," Hamilton said. "I think Red Bull is still fast but I think that Ferrari looked like they quite quick on a single lap. I think [in qualifying] we will get a better understanding of where everyone stands.

"But the long run pace was very good and I think for me I didn’t get my best out of the super-soft tyres, so I think we’ve got more pace.”

While Hamilton played down Ferrari's pace, he admits he would like more teams to be in the mix in order to help his title challenge.

“Honestly I’m not really focusing on other people so I’m not really surprised about anything, I’m just focused on doing my job. They look like they are quite quick, they are obviously not as quick as us at the moment but maybe [Saturday] will be different - who knows.

"I think I had more time on my lap, I think my best lap was lap five or something so the tyres were old by then. It’ll be interesting but I hope they are in the battle with us.”

Having been beaten by team-mate Nico Rosberg in Mexico in 2015, Hamilton is also buoyed by how well his running went on Friday.

“I haven’t really been looking at what Nico’s been doing. The Ferraris look like they are relatively quick for one single lap. It was a nice, solid day for us, we got pretty much all the laps that I needed to do, all through the run plan. I got a good understanding, in a much better position than I was here last year.”

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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.