Sebastian Vettel says Ferrari is still lacking in its qualifying pace compared to rivals Mercedes, having been beaten to pole position for the Chinese Grand Prix by Lewis Hamilton.
Vettel missed out on pole in China by less than 0.3 of a second, but once again managed to split the Mercedes pair in qualifying, posting a time 0.001s faster than Valtteri Bottas, which equates to just 5.9 centimetres of the Shanghai International Circuit.
Qualifying has been a weakness of Ferrari's in recent seasons, with the Scuderia recording just five front row starts including one pole position before this season since the V6 hybrid era began in 2014. While Vettel admits Ferrari still has work to do to catch Mercedes over one lap, he is confident the Maranello outfit has produced a far stronger overall package in 2017 with its SF70H.
"Being pragmatic I think if you take the gap we have had so far I think you can say that in qualifying we are still lacking a bit and in the race I think we are a good match," Vettel said. "Certainly, as for tomorrow, you can draw another average but what matters most is that after 20 races you draw the average and we come out on top but it's a long way. For now we are very happy to be able to challenge Mercedes and hopefully we can do that more and more.
"It was a nice session. I enjoyed it a lot. If we had been a bit quicker in the end I would have enjoyed it more. I was very happy with the lap I had. Last corner I maybe lost a little bit, maybe chickened onto the brakes a bit too soon. But yeah, obviously it was very close with Valtteri so good job we just got enough margin to make it to the front row."
Despite Vettel not being able to jump Hamilton at the start in Australia or pass him on track, Ferrari aced its strategy to complete a successful overcut -- enabling the German to return from his pit stop ahead of the three-time world champion -- before going on to win the season-opener.
When asked how significant the start will be in Sunday's race and whether overtaking will be easier than in Melbourne, Vettel replied: "If I make up eight metres [the gap between first and second on the grid] it looks pretty good. We don't know. There are a lot of things that can turn out in many, many ways tomorrow. That's one option that I mentioned but I wouldn't know for a start, what the conditions will be like so we will see. I think it should be an exciting race.
"Nevertheless, obviously very limited running yesterday, hardly any for me, I think I did two laps. But I don't think anyone had much running. We will see. The car is good, the car is fine so I'm confident whatever the condition the car is working and then we try to do the fastest race."