Hamilton: 'I had a lot of fun' battling Mercedes

Lewis, good to see you. From what we saw in Australia, it looks as though you're really enjoying this new car, feeling more comfortable. How good does that feel after last year and how excited are you for what might be possible this year? Obviously Mercedes, strong out of the blocks as well, but from Ferrari's side? Yeah, I mean I had a lot of fun last week. It's been, just also to have extra testing was something, was fun for us because obviously normally it's only a day and a half in the car before the first race, so to get more running and then a lot discovered through the race from start to end. We knew that Mercedes were looking really strong and little did we know it was as big a gap that we saw, but not an impossible gap to close. Just going to take all hands on deck and that I'm confident in my team doing absolutely everything back at the factory to try and close that gap. Thank you. We know how good you are around here. It was obviously, you had the sprint victory here last time, Lewis. Did maybe some of the characteristics of the track help the Ferrari package as well? I mean are you thinking this maybe is a victory opportunity this weekend? I think it's far too early to say and secondly we were eight tenths behind in qualifying in the last race, so we haven't added eight tenths of performance to the car in four days, so I think it will still be very tough to beat the Mercedes this weekend. You also have to assume that the others are going to be picking up pace, like McLaren picking up pace, and the second Red Bull being in the fight as well, so I think we'll just focus on doing the best job we can and extracting the most from the car. Yeah, more or less the same question. I believe that was a place you enjoy going to, Shanghai, in this track. What are your expectations for this weekend after, I think, a very promising opening of the season? Yeah, I mean we expect Mercedes to be still ahead and very quick, but I think we've learned a huge amount in the last race, as everyone probably has, but I definitely think we can extract more from the package we have. It's not eight tenths, but definitely have, we could hopefully extract a bit more from the car this weekend, so I'm excited, really excited for the weekend.