Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo says Ferrari was stronger than anticipated after Sebastian Vettel led the way during Friday practice at the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Vettel set the quickest time in the dry second session at Sepang, six-tenths clear of team-mate Kimi Räikkönen, with Ricciardo third overall, eight-tenths behind the German.
Ricciardo believes Red Bull is “not looking too bad”, but that Ferrari was faster than expected.
“Ferrari looked a bit stronger than we thought, I’d say,” said Ricciardo.
“I kind of thought Mercedes would lead the pack, and then we would be a bit closer to Ferrari.
“Mercedes had a few issues today by the looks of it. I saw some of Lewis’ onboard and it looked like they were fighting the car – maybe they’re running 80kg of fuel, I don’t know!
“Ferrari was a bit stronger than we thought. We’ve still got a bit of work to do, but we’re OK, we’re not looking too bad.”
Max Verstappen headed the wet opening session, after regularly trading places with Ricciardo, and finished fourth in the afternoon, just 0.010s behind his team-mate.
“In the dry at the moment not, I think Sebastian is really quick,” he said.
“From our side, especially from my side, I was struggling with quite a few things on the car and it didn’t really work out with the new tyres, on the Super Soft.
“I came in again, changed the car, but you always know then with the used tyres it’s not fantastic to do a lap.
“I still improved my lap time by four-tenths, so for sure tomorrow it will be better, but we still need to improve to beat Ferrari tomorrow.”
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