Ferrari has rejected the “favourite” tag ahead of next weekend’s season-opening Australian grand prix.<\/p>\n
Although Mercedes has won the past three titles, Lewis Hamilton thinks a “bluffing” Ferrari is the “favourite” based on Barcelona testing.<\/p>\n
And team chairman Niki Lauda thinks a “tough year” lies ahead for Mercedes.<\/p>\n
Sebastian Vettel, however, insists that Mercedes remains the favourite, and his Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne seems to agree.<\/p>\n
“We had two goals for the Barcelona tests,” Marchionne said.<\/p>\n
“Firstly, to be competitive with Red Bull Racing. And secondly, to have a reliable car. For me, Mercedes is still ahead.”<\/p>\n
Finally, Marchionne spoke about the hapless former Ferrari rival McLaren-Honda, and he said: “I wish them a good recovery.”<\/p>\n
As for the 2017 season more generally, Marchionne remarked: “It will be interesting.<\/p>\n
“The cars are so much faster and the drivers will really have to earn their money. I think they’ll be much sweatier when they get out of their cars.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ferrari has rejected the “favourite” tag ahead of next weekend’s season-opening Australian grand prix. Although Mercedes has won the past three titles, Lewis Hamilton thinks a “bluffing” Ferrari is the “favourite” based on Barcelona testing. And team chairman Niki Lauda thinks a “tough year” lies ahead for Mercedes. Sebastian Vettel, however, insists that Mercedes remains …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,93,5340,598,164,1408],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34488,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34487\/revisions\/34488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}