Hamilton: Mercedes sacrificing pace to Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton admits that Ferrari have sacrificed performance in favour of greater reliability in 2018, helping Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel close the gap. Hamilton dominated at the Spanish grand Prix to win from pole, but Vettel had enjoyed greater performance at the three prior races.

Though Vettel took consecutive pole positions in Bahrian, China and Azerbaijan, he was only victorious in Sakhir and the German is on a three-race run without a podium finish.

That has allowed Hamilton to take a 17-point lead in the drivers' standings, although the Scuderia will be widely expected to be the team to beat at next week's Monaco Grand Prix, where Mercedes struggled badly last year.

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Since the inception of F1's hybrid V6 era, Mercedes have been by far the dominant team, with their greater engine power blowing away the competition.

However, Hamilton believes the Silver Arrows have now been caught, and must alter their focus in order to remain as competitive as possible.

"From what I am told, it has swung a little bit the other way, so in qualifying they [Ferrari] are a little bit up on us and in the race, we are pretty much the same," Hamilton is quoted by Crash.

"Time will tell if reliability is the same. We have put in a lot of work to make sure our reliability is great.

"We seem to have lost a little bit of performance in making sure the reliability is great, or some of the others have gained performance but will they go the distance?

"So maybe we are sacrificing performance for a little bit of endurance."

Hamilton led a Mercedes one-two ahead of Valtteri Bottas in Barcelona, putting the Silver Arrows back to the top of the constructors' standings, 27 points ahead of Ferrari.