Ferrari Formula 1 chief Mattia Binotto feels the team’s ad🌱vantage over Mercedes in Friday’s practice running for the Bahrain Grand Prix is “misleading” as it was using different engine modes to set its fast lap times.

Ferrari struggled to P4 and P5 at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, finiꦏshing almost a minute behind Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas at the front of the pack, leading to concerns about its form heading to Bahrain.

But the team managed to bounce back by taking a one-two finish in both FP1 and FP2 at the Bahrain International Circuit, with the gap to the Mercedes’ drivers standing at over 🃏six-tenths of a second in FP2.

Bottas and Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton said they were braced for a “tough battle” against🍎 Ferrari, but Binotto was quick to warn agai꧂nst reading too much into the result.

“I think tomorrow it will be certainly a toug🀅h battle. The others will be very strong tomorrow,” Binotto said.

“It’s quite obv💧ious. You may see the GPS data, the speed on the ꩲstraights, we were certainly pushing different engine modes compared to what the others were pushing.

“We’re expecting a tough battle t🐻omorrow, but I think more important is staying focuse⭕d on ourselves.”

While Binotto was pleased with the progress Ferrari had made to turn things around since Australia, he remained un🌄sure if it would be enough to bꦚeat rivals Mercedes and Red Bull.

“I think the results of today are misleading. I’m ex⭕pecting quite a different situation tomorrow in qualifying, expecting our competitors to be very strong again,” B🎃inotto said.

“But certainly from what we’ve seen t𒐪oday the situation is quite different to Australia, which mea🙈ns we have progressed, and we have progressed compared to Australia.

“Will🀅 that be sufficient? I don’t know. We need to work on our car based on the feeling and the data we’𓂃ve got today. Let’s try to improve it for tomorrow.”

Additional reporting by Haydn Cobb.