Hamilton advantage helped by 'turned down' Ferrari

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff moved to play down Lewis Hamilton's dominant Friday at the Japanese Grand Prix, warning that Ferrari did not show their hand at Suzuka. Hamilton finished almost a second quicker than title rival Sebastian Vettel in each practice session.

Hamilton ended the day with a best time of one minute 28.217 seconds, 0.833 seconds ahead of Vettel – who was third – with Valtteri Bottas still four tenths adrift of the standing leader.

Mercedes have won all four Suzuka races in the V6 Hybrid era, with Hamilton responsible for three of those wins, but Wolff is not resting on his laurels.

"They are turned down a bit," Wolff told Sky Sports. "We are actually losing a bit through the esses, the fast corners.

"I think probably the lap time flatters us a little bit at the moment. We'll see how it is in qualifying tomorrow."

Wolff added: "In the morning they were quicker through almost every corner, but they had a softer tyre. When we have the same tyre we seem to be gaining a bit on a straight line - that makes me doubt whether they have shown us all their performance.

"Through the esses they're a bit quicker, so the rest is us. It's neck and neck, even though the lap time shows a larger gap."

Mercedes brought a significant upgrade to Sochi last week that has seemingly put the Silver Arrows back ahead of Ferrari in the power stakes, but Wolff warns their full potential is yet to be hit.

"We have never seen the real performance," he said.

"When Valtteri was in the lead [in Sochi], he was trying to manage the tyres and wasn't aware that Vettel was all over Lewis in the back.

"When we manged to get Lewis in front, he had a blister, so we didn't go flat out either.

"There was a little bit of pace in hand."

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