Vettel yet to find 'sweet spot' in Shanghai

Sebastian Vettel says he is yet to find the "sweet spot" in his Ferrari after Friday's Chinese Grand Prix practice sessions. The Scuderia and Mercedes cars were all within a tenth of each other as the Silver Arrows' traditional dominance in Shanghai appears under threat.

Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheets in both practice sessions from Kimi Raikkonen each time, with the Finn outperforming his team-mate on Fridays becoming a familiar theme of this season.

Vettel, however, has of course won both grands prix so far to lead the standings by 17 points from Hamilton.

Perhaps ominously for Mercedes, who have won the last four races in China from pole, Vettel is yet to find the best of his car, despite running within 0.108 seconds of Hamilton.

"In Bahrain I was a lot happier but here is not yet where we want to be," Vettel said. "We are still looking and if anybody has any clever suggestions they're welcome!

#FP2 results: #Kimi7 P2 and #Seb5 P4. #ChineseGP #ForzaFerrari pic.twitter.com/9wNm75KF2j — Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) April 13, 2018

"I think as I said it's difficult to find the sweet spot, but if you do then you can unleash the pace.

"I think the car has the pace but we need to make sure we get it to work and today was mixed. I think in the afternoon was a bit better, I was a bit happier but hopefully tomorrow I am very happy."

Another impressive Raikkonen performance will have been heartening after his Bahrain Grand Prix was ended by a dodgy pit-stop.

Like his team-mate, Raikkonen hopes Ferrari will be able to extract more from their car come the weekend.

"It was OK. I think we had some traffic and for sure we could go faster [over] one lap," he said.

"Obviously on the long run we never really got good idea where we are with the conditions and we'll see what happens tomorrow."