McLaren's Lewis Hamilton believes his team can take the fight to Red Bull Racing after the first day of practice at the inaugural Korean Grand Prix on Friday.
McLaren's Lewis Hamilton believes his team can take the fight to Red Bull Racing after the first day of practice at the inaugural Korean Grand Prix on Friday.
The 25-year-old Briton sits fourth in the title race, 28 points behind leader Mark Webber of Australia with three races remaining.
Hamilton finished in third position in afternoon practice at Yeongam after topping the timesheets in the morning session, and believes there is little to choose between McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull at F1's newest venue.
"We are very competitive -- as competitive as the Red Bulls, at least," the 2008 world champion said.
"The cars are fairly equal this weekend, so maybe it's down to what the driver can pull out."
The new 5.621-kilometre, 16-turn Korean circuit features three lengthy straights, the longest of them a 1.2 km run between Turns 2 and 3 in the opening sector of the lap.
Hamilton is hopeful that McLaren can benefit from its straight-line speed advantage for the rest of the weekend.
"We are generally very quick on the straights, and we seem to be quite competitive in the middle sector, so that's a positive," he said.
"People seem to have dropped a lot of downforce to try to catch us up."
Weeks of heavy rain in the South Jeolla region saw circuit organisers face a race against time for the track to be ready for its maiden Grand Prix, with work on the facilities taking place right up to the start of Friday morning practice.
The final layer of asphalt on the circuit was laid less than two weeks ago, and lap times tumbled as it became cleaner throughout the day.
Hamilton topped morning practice with a best lap of 1min 40.887secs, while Webber's session-best lap in afternoon running for Red Bull was almost three seconds quicker at 1:37.942.
The Briton said the dust on the circuit was "incredible" in the morning session.
"The first session was interesting. It was the dirtiest circuit I've ever been on," he said.
"The evolution has been quite dramatic, and the track's looking quite good now. There's still a lot of dust and stuff around, especially off-line, but the track feels quite good. There might be another second or so (of improvement in the circuit), but we're pretty much there."
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