Kimi Raikkonen: “Different track and tricky weather could make the race more interesting”. Shanghai is a track where Mercedes and Hamilton are traditionally strong.

Preliminaries to the third round of the 2018 championship took place under cloudy skies and lower temperatures than expected. Scuderia Ferrari drivers Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen locked out the front row of the grid in Bahrain and will now be looking to the challenge ahead, before the action starts on Friday morning at the Shanghai International Circuit.

After a positive start to the season, Scuderia Ferrari now have Mercedes in a bit of a pickle despite the fact that Lewis Hamilton remains favored to win another title. It’s still early in the season, but the Maranello team currently hold a lead over Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship. The Shanghai International Circuit will once again test Ferrari’s straight-line speed, but Shanghai is a track where Mercedes and Hamilton are traditionally strong. The world champion has won there five times and the Silver Arrows started winning there with Nico Rosberg from pole back in 2012, when Michael Schumacher was his team mate. Mercedes have been on pole ever since, their best qualifying record at any circuit. The track brings in the first proper high speed corners of the season and that was an area where Mercedes had the legs on Ferrari last season. The Maranello team has lengthened its car slightly this season, in an effort to compensate, albeit not as long a wheelbase as Mercedes.

“This track is completely different, and the layout and the surface of a circuit can make a bigger difference than any other factor. Whether this is going to favour someone, or it is the same for everybody, we don’t know yet. We have had good speed at both tracks so far, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be the same here. We’ll start tomorrow, see how it is and do our normal program. Let’s see how it is going to play out over the weekend, if it will be raining or not. The weather can be a bit tricky here, it’s a bit hard to predict what will happen. It will be interesting to see where we are.” – Scuderia Ferrari Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen explained, ahead of the 2018 Chinese Grand Prix.