Lewis Hamilton believes Ferrari's apparent advantage could be explained by the Italian team being one month ahead on development with their 2019 car.

 All the analysis after pre-season testing points to the Scuderia being ahead of Mercedes despite the gap between Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel being only 0.003s on the final day.

Mere hours before he would set the lap time within that margin of his long-time rival, however, the world champion suggested the difference between the teams could be as much as 0.5s.

And now Hamilton thinks he knows how Ferrari achieved it.

"Obviously, during the year you have a huge group of people all working towards the championships, but if you're not looking like winning the world championship, out of worry you might pull some of the team off earlier," he said.

"So, most likely, they've [Ferrari] started developing this car a month, at least, earlier than us, when we were pushing to win the world title, which we obviously did.

"It's different when you're chasing, as opposed to defending. Last year they arrived here with a car that was working well, but they've got even better this year.

"That's okay, we don't mind the challenge, the fight. It just means we've got to work harder," he ended.

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Much of pre-season saw Mercedes in recovery mode, as their Melbourne-spec upgrades helped them overcome handling issues with impacted their first week.

The German manufacturer was also struggling with the tyres as they suffered from graining, particularly on longer runs.

"They are a little bit hard," Hamilton told Autosport. "I don't really have a lot of good things to say on that, so best I probably don't say anything.

"As we get into the year, it is going to be a challenge. They are more challenging this year than they were last (year).

"We will get used to it, and it will be the norm. Valtteri [Bottas] seems to be enjoying driving the tyres out there and I will get a bit of a better feel for what the tyres are like.

"I've been driving on more fuel so it is never a good feeling generally in any year when you have more fuel on board. But we are all in the same boat and I will try to understand them the best I can."