Lewis Hamilton comes to Mercedes realisation as Ferrari weakness revealed

Lewis Hamilton believes his Ferrari team must increase its performance in a straight line to be able to keep pace with his old Mercedes team.

In Sprint qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix, Hamilton will line up in fourth position behind the Mercedes duo of George Russell and Kimi Antonelli on the front-row and Lando Norris's Mercedes-powered McLaren in third.

Hamilton was 0.641s slower than Russell in SQ3, and just 0.020s to pipping Norris to third on the Sprint grid. 

Most of the time loss for Mercedes' rivals came in the final sector and the 1.2km long back straight, with Hamilton believing that an increase in power is imperative for Ferrari to be able to fight with the Silver Arrows, something Hamilton already believes his SF-26 machine can do in the corners.

"I'm really pleased with the session, my team did a really great job," Hamilton said.

"My engineers did a fantastic job to turn the car around because in practice, it was a tricky session with the spin and [in sprint qualifying], the car generally felt great.

"It's just that we are losing on the straights, it is a lot of time to be losing, so we have a lot of work to do, we really have to push hard back in Maranello to improve on power.

"It was something we were conscious of last year, that we thought Mercedes had started earlier than us, which they did last time, of course, so they've done a fantastic job, and we've got to step up.

"We've got to push to be able to close that gap, and car-wise, it feels great. 

"We can compete with them in the corners, but when you're down on power, that is just the way it is."