Lewis Hamilton says he wants to race Ferrari closely in the Chinese Grand Prix, but believes its win in Malaysia has been "blown out of proportion".
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff described Sebastian Vettel's victory as a "wake-up call" for the defending champions, with Nico Rosberg also saying he was surprised by Ferrari's pace. However, when Hamilton was asked if he agrees with Wolff's analysis, he says he is much more relaxed about Ferrari's challenge.
"I honestly don't [agree], but he is the team boss and you would imagine that is his perspective," Hamilton said. "For me, you can't get every weekend right, and it wasn't even that much of a disaster of a weekend for us. Apart from the fact we missed a session, but that could happen any time.
"We missed a session, we had no real time to do a set-up and didn't do a long run, so we would have changed things on set-up. As a car wasn't on track maybe we could have worked harder to extract more from Nico's car, so there are so many things we could have done better, but it wasn't a big disaster.
"People have definitely blown it out of proportion, and hopefully we will get it right this weekend."
Asked if he prefers having Ferrari in the fight for victory, Hamilton replied: "Absolutely.
"I was actually quite chilled after the race because you can't win them all. Second is still good. It was great to have that competition. I wish we were closer and we didn't have the 10-second gap between us because it could have been a really good race, so hopefully we'll have that here. That would be really cool."
Click here for Chris Medland's Chinese Grand Prix preview.
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
