Sebastian Vettel claimed it was hard to find a rhythm around the streets of Baku, after a steady if not spectacular practice day on Friday.
The German was third in the morning but would fall to fifth in the afternoon, behind team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, as persistent yellow flags for driving locking brakes and two red flag periods made achieving consecutive fast laps particularly tricky.
A resurgent Red Bull leading the way also suggested it could be a three-team battle at the front this weekend, but Vettel is still confident in what Ferrari can bring to the table.
“Yeah, I think it was very close today. I think we struggled a bit to get a lap together, I hope it’s close tomorrow and I hope that we’ll come out on top,” he said.
“We tried some things this afternoon, but I think it’s not easy to find the rhythm on this track. I hope I wasn’t the only one going down the escape roads many times.
“I think I used reverse three times and I haven’t used reverse once in the last three years but it is good to do this today so we don’t have to tomorrow.
“It was a fun day; we see the short run was not ideal; we didn’t put everything together but tomorrow is another day. Not sure we are missing much, it looked very close. I think Red Bull is very fast, not just for one lap but both sessions.”
On a day for cool heads, there’s few better than Vettel’s team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, and in conditions similar to those in which he scored the pole position in Monaco, with large variations in temperatures and a smooth track surface, the Finn labelled tyre management as one of his main setbacks on Friday.
“I think the tyres were difficult to make work and if they’re not working at 100 percent then it’s a bit tricky to make them work,” he explained. “I think that was the main thing.
“The trickiest part was actually making them work, to get them hot enough, but if you achieve that, then everything else becomes a lot easier.”
On his pace, Kimi added: “We are there or thereabouts but I think the car is OK but we have, obviously, still work to do.”