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Two former F1 drivers do not think Ferrari is ready to beat Mercedes to the world championship. "No," Gerhard Berger, a 10-time grand prix winner and former team boss, told Germany's Auto Bild emphatically. "The gap Mercedes had at the end of last year was just too big -- Ferrari can't catch it up this quickly," he predicted.
David Coulthard agrees that, notwithstanding the fact Ferrari is obviously closer so far in 2016, Mercedes will surely maintain the edge this season. "I expect them to win the championship again this year," the former McLaren and Red Bull driver, now a respected British television pundit, told Laureus. "To dominate I think is going to be difficult, I do think Ferrari will keep them on their toes, but I do see the championship battle to be between the two Mercedes drivers," Coulthard added.
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To that end, he thinks early leader Nico Rosberg finally has a good chance of beating reigning triple world championship Lewis Hamilton to the crown. "The statistics say that every driver who has won five races in a row will be world champion. It would be a shame if Nico Rosberg breaks that run," he said.
Hamilton, however, is notably upbeat, insisting he remains in championship-winning form despite not winning in Australia and Bahrain. "Hopefully this race (China) can be the turning point," the Briton said on Monday.
Shanghai could be an interesting strategic battle. Rosberg has selected more soft tyres to use throughout the weekend than Hamilton, while Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel has put more super-softs in the luggage.
"Every team is bound to want to qualify on the super-soft," said Mercedes' Paddy Lowe, "but if it grains in the race, we could see cars stopping in the first five laps. There will be plenty of analysis to do on Friday," he added. (GMM)
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C. Sainz jr
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Replies (4)
Login to replymcbhargav
Posts: 1,332
Not with this set-up. They need atleast 4 tenths to be competitive. 6 tenths to win.
khasmir
Posts: 893
Indeed, would be great to see them win more races and put more pressure on Merc than last year but to get even one of the two titles will be extremely difficult.
It was always going to be a long term plan for Ferrari so maybe they can make the difference in 2017.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
They can win, but they need to fix their reliability, and fast. Its good that they redesigned that faulty injector, but thats just one problem... unless a faulty injector also could've caused Räikkönen's turbo failure in Australia? But I doubt they'll win in China, its not a good track for their car. I bet that Mercedes-powered cars will dominate this weekend, closely followed by Ferrari and then Renault/Honda somewhere last. On a sidenote, this season has been quite interesting so far.
mclarenfan1968
Posts: 1,027
Yeah the pace was there to win both races with better strategy, outright pace isn't needed when you can win with clever strategies. Ferrari have been very poor with strategy calls, this has been true for the last 4-5 seasons.