ISTANBUL

Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton said he was satisfied with finishing fourth in Sprint Qualifying at the Chinese Grand Prix but admitted that Ferrari still has “a lot of work to do” to catch Mercedes.

Hamilton narrowly missed a top-three finish during Friday’s session in Shanghai, finishing just 0.020 seconds behind Lando Norris of McLaren.

However, Hamilton was six-tenths of a second behind his former teammate George Russell, who topped the Sprint Qualifying timesheets with another strong performance for Mercedes.

"I'm really pleased with the session," Hamilton said to F1TV after Sprint Qualifying. "My engineers did a fantastic job to turn the car around because P1 was a tricky session with that spin. The car generally felt great,” he added.

"But, I think we're losing on the straights -- that's a lot of time to be losing. We have a lot of work to do. We really have to push so hard back in Maranello to improve on power,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton said Ferrari had expected Mercedes to gain an early advantage after starting development sooner.

“So they have done a fantastic job, and we've got to push to be able to close that gap,” he added.