Sebastian Vettel is still of the opinion Ferrari must not focus all its attention on challenging Mercedes for pole position or the win in China despite encouraging pace during Friday practice.
Ferrari arrived in China on the back of Vettel's unexpected victory in Malaysia and all eyes were on the Italian outfit during Friday practice to see if it can genuinely challenge on a regular basis. The cooler temperatures of Shanghai are expected to swing the advantage back towards Mercedes and it appeared to be business as usual in FP1 and FP2, though Ferrari's longer runs remained impressive.
Vettel says it is always wrong to jump to conclusions on Fridays and wants Ferrari to ensure it is at least best of the rest this weekend, an opinion he voiced on Thursday.
"Generally I feel happy in the car," Vettel said. "I think we can improve it, usually that's what the Friday is for so ideally I would have loved to have done more laps. All in all it was a solid session for the team as well, I think we can do a step forward tomorrow and then we can see what we can do.
"Don't forget, first of all, it's only the third race of the season, second of all, it's a completely different track, different conditions which are new for everyone. Therefore the most important thing for us is to look after ourselves and then go step by step. Today is Friday, it's the day you do your homework, and that's what we tried to do."
Williams rarely shows its true hand on Fridays and expects its struggles in Malaysia to be an anomaly, as it was last year, and Vettel is clearly still wary of the Grove outfit.
When asked of Ferrari's chances for pole, the four-time champion said: "Well, it will be very close, [Mercedes] were very strong today in both sessions and all the runs. I think for us the most important [thing] is to do a step overnight, I think there is a couple of things we can improve on and then we will see where it takes us. Priority number one is to be right behind and if we have the chance to fight them, we will try, if not we have to make sure nobody gets ahead of us."