‘Best yet’ Hamilton has battle with Ferrari on his hands
• Vettel leads championship after opener win
Lewis Hamilton has raised his game, but whether the Mercedes driver can deny Ferrari a second successive win of the season in China this weekend remains to be seen.
On paper, the triple world champion is still the man to beat — the most successful driver by far in Shanghai with four wins.
“Lewis is the best Lewis that I’ve seen in the last four years, on and off the track,” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff after the Briton started on pole and finished second to Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in the Australian season-opener.
“He has become a pillar of this team and he proved that in Melbourne,” Wolff said.
But Vettel is leading the championship, the first time a non-Mercedes driver has done that since he took his fourth title with Red Bull in 2013 and oncedominant Mercedes have a fight on their hands.
Mercedes, who have taken the drivers and constructors’ titles for the past three years, have won four of the past five races in China.
As Melbourne showed however, past form may count for little in a season of sweeping rule change.
“If you think you are going to cruise to victory in the future, based on a track record of success, you’ll be proven wrong very quickly,” said Wolff.
Ferrari have not started a season with consecutive wins since 2004 at the peak of the Michael Schumacher era.
Vettel’s win in Australia ended a victory drought for Ferrari stretching back to September 2015 and even drew rare praise from company chairman Sergio Marchionne, but the team must now prove they can be genuine contenders.
“You really have to go step by step,” said Vettel.
“It’s good to know that we have a great car but it’s just the beginning: [there are] new regulations, new generations of cars so there will be a lot of progress,” he said.
The 2017 cars are longer and wider, sporting fatter tyres and more swept-back bodywork as part of a rules shake-up aimed at making them faster, more spectacular to watch and harder to drive. But overtaking has also become more difficult, with Australia raising concern about the lack of real moves.
The long straights and wide sweeps of the Shanghai circuit saw 128 passes in 2016, more than at any other track, and should provide a more definitive verdict. Once-great McLaren can expect to be on the receiving end, with engine partners Honda under intense pressure after a slow start to the season.
“The characteristics of the Shanghai International Circuit are very different from Melbourne and its long, fast straights will likely expose the weaknesses in our package more than Albert Park did,” said McLaren racing director Eric Boullier. Italian rookie Antonio Giovinazzi makes his second start for Sauber as a replacement for Pascal Wehrlein, with the Swiss team concerned the German still needs time to get race fit.