Sebastian Vettel has highlighted McLaren as Red Bull’s early rival after admitting the MP4-27 looked ‘very strong’ during its longer runs.
Vettel managed the quickest lap on Tuesday, a 1:23.265, which was just over three tenths faster than Lewis Hamilton, but the German suspects the Woking outfit was concentrating on longer runs.
“I think McLaren looked very strong today,” he said after Tuesday’s session. “I haven’t seen all the lap times yet, I have only had a couple of looks on the long runs that Lewis did today – they seemed to be quite interesting.
“To be honest I haven’t seen much of the other cars on the track [but] obviously I can judge for myself that the feeling [from the RB8] is fine but I don’t know whether that is good enough or not.
“I think the McLaren looks quite competitive. I think they didn’t go for one lap at all but they did long runs etcetera and they looked fairly competitive, so I think they will be strong straight from the beginning of the season.”
When asked who else he was keeping a watchful eye out for, he replied: “I think we saw in Jerez Lotus was quite a surprise, whether they can keep it up or not, I don’t know. Today they didn’t run much.
“Ferrari is a bit of a secret at this stage and nobody knows whether they are really good or really bad – and I don’t know what other people think about us, so we will have to wait and see.”
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