Hamilton believes Ferrari have 'made a step forward' as he identifies 'main focus' for Chinese Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton believes Ferrari have "made a step forward" this weekend after the Briton and team mate Charles Leclerc secured second-row starts for the Chinese Grand Prix.

The seven-time World Champion finished third fastest during Qualifying on Saturday and will start behind Mercedes duo Kimi Antonelli and George Russell for Sunday's 56-lap race in Shanghai.

Hamilton was only 0.351s behind Antonelli in the classification, a much smaller gap than Mercedes previously had over the field at the season-opener in Australia last weekend.

While Hamilton believes Russell's Q3 car problems might have contributed to the gap being smaller, he admitted that the Scuderia were moving in the right direction.

"I do take it with a pinch of salt because I don't think George got a consistent bunch of runs and I think maybe he would have been a little bit quicker had he had consistent runs," said Hamilton.

"But either way, we'll take it and I think we have improved the car a tiny bit. We haven't changed or upgraded the car, it's not like we've truly halved the gap but we made a step forward."

Hamilton challenged for the lead in Saturday's Sprint having gone wheel-to-wheel with eventual winner Russell, but believes it will be a tall order to challenge the Mercedes duo in Sunday's longer Grand Prix.

"These guys are going to be rapid in the race as they were today and it's going to be very hard to keep them at bay, he said.

"I think I've got to figure out a different approach tomorrow to go the distance and have pace throughout the race, that's my main focus now.

"The Sprint race wasn't really good for me performance-wise. It was good at the start but then after that it died off, so I can't have that tomorrow."

Leclerc, meanwhile, will start fourth but believes Ferrari's impressive starts, along with the unique style of racing the current generation of cars offers, anything is possible.

"With these cars starting P1, P2, P3, P4, after three laps, everything is quite chaotic and we will be there," he said.

"I'm happy with where I start and tomorrow in the race I normally feel a little bit better here so I'm looking forward to that."