Daniel Ricciardo believes Mercedes remain favourites to take out this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix despite their lack of pace in Friday practice.
Red Bull and Ferrari appeared to have closed the gap to the pace setting Mercedes squad with Daniil Kvyat (Red Bull), Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) and Ricciardo (Red Bull) filling the top three places in second practice.
The Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were fourth and seventh respectively as they struggled for outright pace on the super soft tyre.
While Ricciardo was happy with his pace, which saw him end up 0.2s quicker than Hamilton, the Australian believes the Silver Arrows were sandbagging in the session.
The 26-year-old from Perth fully expects Mercedes to improve its car speed over the weekend but remains hopeful of challenging for a podium finish come Sunday.
“I am not really looking towards Mercedes,” said Ricciardo.
“I am sure that they will turn it up and find the way. Ferrari and Williams normally turn it up on Saturday.
“Hopefully whatever they do will not be too much, and we can fight for somewhere on the podium.
“We had quite a bit of traffic on the option lap in P2, so we still have a bit more pace in us, which is nice, but Saturday is the important one.
“I am just happy that we started off on the right foot today. The car felt pretty strong out of the box.
“As expected it is performing well around here, so fingers crossed the other guys don't find too much speed tomorrow and we stay more or less where we are.”
However, championship leader Hamilton believes Red Bull and Ferrari's practice pace will provide Mercedes a hard fought battle for pole position and race victory.
“I definitely think we've got a genuine challenge from those guys,” said Hamilton.
“I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes, it's going to be interesting.
“Ferrari are very fast, and Red Bull look like they are quicker.
“I'm not focusing on the others so I'm not any more excited, but if it's closer then it's going to be more exciting for the fans and also for us.”