Lewis Hamilton expects Ferrari to back Sebastian Vettel in F1 title race

Lewis Hamilton expects Ferrari will throw their support behind Sebastian Vettel in the battle for this year's F1 Drivers' Championship.

Hamilton trails Vettel by 13 points in the standings after 2017's first four races, while team-mate Valtteri Bottas is a further 10 adrift, with the Mercedes pair having won a race apiece so far to their Ferrari rival's two.

However, Vettel's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen is already 37 points off the title pace with the former champion yet to out-qualify or outrace the sister Ferrari so far.

And asked if he agreed with the assessment of former Ferrari driver Felipe Massa that the Scuderia would throw the bulk of their support behind Vettel, Hamilton told Sky Sports News HQ: "I think they are always like that. That's how Ferrari are, they focus always on one driver.

"So I don't see that really changing."

Ferrari famously operated clear number one driver policies in their Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso eras, with the former period delivering a record haul of consecutive championships.

Massa, who was team-mate to Alonso for four seasons, said: "If you have a driver in the front, especially Sebastian, Kimi will work the whole year for Sebastian, 100 per cent sure. Let's say now [that if] Lewis is more than 20 points in front, Valtteri has to do the same."

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Although Mercedes' management have acknowledged that different dynamics are at play at the front of F1 this year after three years of single-team dominance by them, they have consistently stressed they would be loathed to impose team orders and want to continue allowing their drivers to duke it out on track.

Asked by SSNHQ if he was worried he and Bottas could split victories between them over the season at the expense of the drivers' title, Hamilton said: "It inevitably does when you have equal opportunity at the team. So, no different for me, I've just got to do a better job."

But it was Bottas who enjoyed the stronger Grand Prix at the last race in Sochi with the Finn winning his maiden F1 race while Hamilton toiled to a distant fourth-placed finish amid weekend-long tyre temperature issues.

With Mercedes having completed lots of work to understand why Hamilton struggled for pace with his W08 in Russia, Hamilton is hopeful of a more competitive Spanish GP.

"There is no magic bullet and there is no magic main issue," he said. "It's just a bunch of small things can make a big difference.

"So I come to another circuit and hopefully learning from the last race we won't have that problem again."

Buoyed by his first Grand Prix pole and then first win over the last two race weekends, Bottas arrives at Barcelona in strong form and believes the fight for the 2017 title could still be considered a four-way fight, including him and countryman Raikkonen.

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Mercedes, like all teams, arrive at Barcelona with car upgrades and Bottas reckons the battle with Ferrari will continue to be defined by fine margins.

"It's a very tight battle with Ferrari and it's all about details," Bottas told reporters.

"Everything counts. Ferrari have been more consistently in the operating window with both compounds and we still have a lot to unlock from this package."

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