Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have offered differing views on how their respective teams stack up in the build-up to the Bahrain GP.
Though it was the Ferrari driver who scored the 25 points in Melbourne two weeks ago, it was pretty clear that the Mercedes remains at the top of the pecking order as highlighted by the world champion’s six-tenths advantage in qualifying.
Vettel, however, doesn’t think that single lap deficit was a true reflection on the current state of play but did offer an estimate of where he thought the two teams were.
“I think if you look at the pace, testing and first race, it’s pretty clear that Mercedes is fastest, probably with three or four-tenths gap,” Vettel said on Thursday.
“That’s also what we saw in the race. Lewis was controlling his pace in the beginning and then pushed when he had to and he had time in hand.”
Hamilton refuted that suggestion though and even continued to play down the impact of their so-called ‘party mode’ which offers extra engine power in qualifying.
“I don’t have a figure, the team hasn’t mentioned a figure to me,” he said of his rival’s claim.
“They said in qualifying we think that we are power-wise equal to them, they made a really big improvement and that in the race we might have a slight edge on them.
“It’s hard to say from one race, they had a different run profile particularly in the race they were doing something different fuelling wise. You’ll get a much better idea over the coming races.”
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Regardless of the true picture, and where Red Bull feature too, Vettel vows to continue taking the fight to the Silver Arrows with Australia proof of what can happen.
“It’s a no-brainer that we know we’re not quick enough yet and Mercedes at this stage is quick but we go racing, it’s not that we live in simulation land and rely solely on numbers,” he said.
