Lewis Hamilton still talking up Ferrari's 2017 chances

Lewis Hamilton is still convinced that Ferrari is the favorite heading into the 2017 season.

The triple World Champion insisted he was not convinced when Sebastian Vettel was cautious about the Italian team’s chances when the pair were in a press conference in Melbourne together on Thursday.

“I see Ferrari being the quickest at the moment,” said Hamilton. “And I think they will definitely be the favorites but we’ll find out more going into the weekend. It’s interesting to see, Sebastian’s usually a lot more hype and I can tell he’s trying to keep a lid on it. But their pace was obviously great in testing.

“I’m very keen to see what Red Bull bring because they were quite far behind through testing, at least compared to Ferrari and didn’t see them bring many upgrades – or an upgrade as far as I could see. So I’m assuming they’re bringing something here which I’m excited to see what they do bring.”

Hamilton remains confident that Mercedes can still win through this year.

“Whether or not we’re in the right place at this moment in the season, we’ll find out. But I have every belief in my team that we can do that.”

Regarding this year’s cars, he said: “As racing drivers and in general you want to drive the quickest cars in the world and you always want to go faster and the cars are faster than they were last year. And the challenge of exploiting that speed with your car on track is a great challenge.”

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