Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen expect Ferrari to be "there or thereabouts" come qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix following Friday practice in Baku.
The Scuderia moved to within 0.127s of Red Bull when it finally ran the super-soft tyre in a competitive afternoon session in which the top five were separated by just 0.253s. Despite failing to finish any higher than third place on Friday, championship leader Vettel says he is confident Ferrari has the pace to challenge for pole position on Saturday.
"It was a fun day," Vettel said. "We tried a couple of things and now we see the short run was not ideal, we didn't put everything together but tomorrow is another day. Not sure we are missing much, it looked very close. I think Red Bull is very fast, not just for one lap but both sessions. I think we are OK, I think it is a question of getting everything together. I was pretty happy with it.
"I think it's not easy to find the rhythm on this track," he added. "I hope I wasn't the only one going down the escape roads many times. I think I used reverse three times and I haven't used reverse once in the last three years but it is good to do this today so we don't have to tomorrow."
Raikkonen admitted he struggled to get the most out of his tyres and says Ferrari has work to do on its tyre performance ahead of qualifying.
"I think the trickiest part was actually making [the tyres] work, to get them hot enough, but if you achieve that, then everything else becomes a lot easier. We are there or thereabouts but I think the car is OK but we have, obviously, still work to do."