Malaysia 2015 - Can Ferrari challenge Mercedes?

Before I begin this post folks I would just like to apologize for the lack of posts recently. Being a college student, work for my upcoming A Level exams has rather got in the way, however I will endeavor to post as much as I can. For now though, I want to talk about Ferrari.

The second race of the Formula 1 season is upon us and already things look a lot better than they did in Melbourne. Both Valtteri Bottas and Fernando Alonso have been cleared to race, and Manor Marussia have finally hit the track and look to be in good shape to be able to qualify and race this weekend. However, the biggest story to come from Friday Practice is the pace of Ferrari, as they have emerged as maybe,just maybe, a surprise challenger to Mercedes this weekend...

Ferrari emerged as best of the rest behind Mercedes in Melbourne, and it looks like that trend may continue this weekend, with Mercedes upfront, followed by the Scuderia and then the Williams team. In practice today the two scarlet red cars showed incredibly strong long-run pace, which would allow them to challenge the Silver Arrows if they could repeat it on Sunday.

Kimi Raikkonen ended both sessions on Friday in second place and was exactly 0.373 seconds off the pace of the fastest Mercedes, in this case above, Hamilton. This did raise a few eyebrows, but more so the finn's pace on the medium tyres in FP2. Raikkonen managed a nine lap run on the medium compound tyres. On average his laptime was around 1m45.080s. Compare that to what the two Mercedes were doing, with the six lap run Lewis Hamilton did (the Mercedes driver sat out FP1 after a car failure and then had a stop start FP2) and his average was 1m45.070s, with Nico Rosbergs average being slower than both his team mate and Raikkonen, at 1m45.313s over seven laps. Compare the averages of all three drivers runs, and once adjusted, Raikkonen was on average around a tenth faster than Hamilton and also three tenths faster than Rosberg, who had a trouble free FP1 and FP2. 

Now, there is every chance that this is Ferrari doing what it has been known to do on Fridays in recent times, run lower fuel loads, which make it look better before it tails off come race day. However, this is still very encouraging for Ferrari, even if Sebastian Vettels long run on the hard compound tyres meant that only Raikkonens car could be used as a comparison to the Mercedes. The team of course have said that they won't be in contention for the win and rightly so, as the chances are still in favor of Mercedes winning, as it would take some beating to knock them off the top spot of the podium on Sunday. However, Ferraris pace could mean that, if Mercedes do hit trouble in any way,shape or form this Sunday, the two red cars from Maranello could well be the ones to pick up the pieces and take home the silverware. Ferrari back on the top step off the podium...wouldn't that be something?