McLaren showed a far superior pace in Friday's second practice to their rivals with Hamilton clocking a 1:50.828 around the 5.615km Yeongam circuit in wet conditions.His nearest rival was his own team-mate Jenson Button, who was 0.108s slower, while the next in line was Sebastian Vettel. The Red Bull driver, though, was 1.818s behind Hamilton.
And although the Brit concedes that Friday's times, especially as they were set in the wet when the rest of the weekend is expected to be dry, count for very little, he does believe McLaren will put in a strong challenge this weekend.
"I think we are quick, the car feels good and Jenson showed in the last race that we can be competitive," said Hamilton.
"I have no doubts that we can challenge Red Bull but whether or not we can out-qualify them, which hasn't been done all year, will be interesting.
"It's early days and it was miserable today and irrelevant in terms of set-up. Tomorrow we'll get a better feel for where the car is."
However, his team-mate Button revealed McLaren's times may have been down to the fact that at no stage did the team run race-simulation fuel loads.
"It's so, so difficult out there today," he told the BBC. "We were hoping the track would dry out but it didn't and there was no grip.
"We didn't do any high-fuel running, which we normally do, and I haven't got a clue what the car is going to be like in the dry.
"It would be nice to have the same gap to the cars behind. P3 will be an important session. It would nice to knock Red Bull off pole, we'll give it a go."
Source: Planet-F1
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