Hamilton: Ferrari's top speed could hurt them after Baku

Lewis Hamilton believes that Ferrari's straight-line speed will make them competitive this weekend in the Azerbaijani Grand Prix.

However, the Mercedes driver thinks their rivals will not be as strong in some races.

"They were fast in straight lines," Hamilton said after winning the Chinese Grand Prix. "They won four tenths, I think it was in straight lines but they lost in the turns.

"So I think it will be interesting to see how long they will keep this strategy. It will be great in some places, as the next race will probably be very good for them in this regard. But in others maybe not so much. "

After this weekend's race on the Baku high-speed circuit, the championship continues on the circuit of Catalunya, consisting mainly of turns at medium and high speed, followed by the tight and slow circuit of Monaco.

Although Mercedes has so far swept the first two places in the three races, Hamilton said the competition was tight and the relative shape of the leading cars was hard to read.

"We have another tight battle in our hands," he said. "Red Bull, I do not know where they were [in China] but I know that Ferrari was right there. I think we have future races that could potentially suit them more, who knows.

"We did not expect to [them] have a deficit in Australia and we did not expect a deficit in [Bahrain] and we did not expect this weekend to have the little margin we had [in China]. He is still in the air.

"I think that in the end, as a team, we performed collectively, we really delivered on the weekends, so we just have to keep doing it."

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