Vettel: Mercedes is fastest by three or four-tenths

Vettel told journalists in Sakhir, “We have enough clever people to know that we're not quick enough yet. After every running that we do and people looking into all sorts of stuff to try and get more performance out of us, out of the team, out of the car."

“It's also a no-brainer that we're not quick enough yet and Mercedes is quicker. But we go racing. If you look at the pace, in testing and at the first race, it's pretty clear that Mercedes is fastest, probably with three or four-tenths gap."

“Lewis was controlling his pace in the beginning [in Australia] and pushed when he had to. He had time in hand. It's very close behind them. Ultimately we need to have pace to win. I'm confident that we can. I think the car has potential, but we need to make progress and catch up quickly to be there to fight for wins just the way we did at many races last year.”

Vettel believes the gap was similar in qualifying, perhaps forgetting that Hamilton obliterated his rivals to claim pole in Melbourne by seven-tenths of a second.

The German said, “I think that's the gap we saw in qualy and then the race, so both. In qualifying, the gap then looked a bit bigger than it probably should have been.”