Lewis Hamilton has admitted he expects a close fight with Ferrari in the Bahrain Grand Prix, as Sebastian Vettel did well to split the two Mercedes drivers, him and Nico Rosberg, in Saturday's qualifying session.
Hamilton secured his fourth pole position in a row by a margin of four tenths of a second, meaning the Englishman will start the race just ahead of Vettel on the front row of the grid tomorrow. Lewis had this to say, on his competition ahead of the race: "They are very quick this weekend and are going to be tough to beat tomorrow. They have great race pace and hopefully with our positioning that does help. We will be taking all measures we can to make the tyres go as far as they do. But I think we are in a good position so looking forward to the fight."
Vettel was happy with his position in the grid ahead of Sunday's afternoon race, stating: "It was a great success for us to be able to split them [the two Mercedes cars]. We are very happy with where we are, how competitive we are. Let's go step-by-step and we will try to do our best race tomorrow and if that means we put some big pressure on them then why not? Our target is to look after ourselves, but if there is a chance to fight one or both of them we have to go for it."
Rosberg was quite the opposite, as Vettel's German compatriot felt disappointed that he finished behind both title rivals in qualifying, which sets him up for a tough test to say the least: "I didn't push enough in qualifying and I thought too much about the race. That would have been fine if I finished second to Lewis, but not finishing third. I didn't see that coming - I didn't see Sebastian being that quick and I didn't think I would struggle that much as a result. I got it wrong today so I am definitely not happy with that."
Kimi Raikkonen, the other Ferrari driver, will line-up in fourth place on Sunday. Rosberg continued: "Friday they [Ferrari] were quicker than us, but we worked on the car a lot Friday night and we think we have improved it. It was to do with the cold conditions, it is really cold in the evenings and the tyres weren't really working properly. We had to work on that and we are confident that we improved things, so we should be a little bit quicker or at least on par with Ferrari. But the start is going to be very important, but I am out there to win tomorrow."