Lewis Hamilton says it is “highly unlikely” Ferrari will fight Mercedes for victory at Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix after he qualified third on the grid behind Kimi Antonelli and George Russell.
Hamilton took the fight to Russell at the start of Saturday’s sprint race in Shanghai, but ultimately lost out to the Mercedes and dropped to third place behind teammate Charles Leclerc by the chequered flag.
After qualifying over 0.8 seconds off the lead Mercedes at the first round in Australia, Hamilton reduced the gap to 0.351 seconds in China, but still thinks his former team is too fast to fight in Sunday’s race.
“I think it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be able to beat them in the race,” Hamilton said. “I mean, in our statistics, they’ve got something between 0.4 and 0.6 seconds [advantage in] race pace.
“Whether or not we saw that in the first race or not, I think in clear air, they’re just above us at the moment. So I don’t know.
“Maybe with strategy, maybe something can happen. Maybe with the start, maybe there’s a way. I definitely need to make sure I don’t kill my tyre trying to either keep up with them or keep one behind. So I need to drive better tomorrow.”
Hamilton made the most of a fast start to fight Russell for the lead in the sprint race — just as his teammate Charles Leclerc had managed at the start of the Australian Grand Prix last weekend.
But Leclerc, who qualified fourth in China, doubts Ferrari’s start line advantage will be enough to put them in contention for the victory over the full distance of Sunday’s race.
“No, I mean, they are very strong, for sure,” Leclerc said of Mercedes. “And they’ve got this pace advantage at the moment, which is very important.
“I think that whenever, especially at the start of the race, we seem to be a bit flexible with where we want to deploy, etc. And they seem to struggle.
“And also the fact that when you start fighting so much with batteries, you’re going to have the effect that you slow them down and stay in the fight.
“So hopefully that’s the case tomorrow. The race is quite exciting, probably from outside and also from inside the cockpit.”
Hamilton said Ferrari is focused on improving its qualifying form relative to Mercedes and suspects the difference in performance is linked to the power unit.
“Whether they have more energy or more crank power, we don’t know, it’s impossible to know,” he said. “But they’re just very quick when it comes to qualifying particularly, but we are working to improve in that region.
“And then in the race, it gets a little bit closer. I don’t know why, but I’m grateful that it is a little bit closer in the race.
“It’s not close enough. We’re definitely feeling thirsty on power when we’re behind them. It’s really, really hard to keep up, and you can tell they just have more ground.
“They’re just pulling for longer. That’s what I did this morning. I was just trying to make it up through the corners, but it just wasn’t making any difference.
“I was just killing my tyres.”
