Double Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel has singled out Red Bull's rivals McLaren as potentially their main threat for 2012, saying that the team's performance on the first day of the Barcelona test was "interesting".
With five of the twelve pre-season testing days completed, the true pecking order for the 2012 season is still somewhat hard to read.
Vettel topped a test day for the first time on Tuesday, ending less than two tenths of a second ahead of Nico Hulkenberg's Force India.
But the German admitted afterwards that it had been the pace of Lewis Hamilton and McLaren that had caught his interest the most.
But he admitted that it was "too early" to judge the pace of the rest of Red Bull's expected rivals.
"I think McLaren looked very strong today," the German grimaced at reporters after the Tuesday rumming was over.
"For the rest it is too early. I haven't seen all the lap times yet, I have only had a couple of looks on the long runs that Lewis did today – they seemed to be quite interesting."
He went on: "At this stage we are not really talking about the championship for sure.
"I don't think there is anybody here trying to do worse than last year, so we are trying to do what we did last year, but it's a long way from now."
Vettel has been coy about his chances of a third straight world championship in 2012, and he continued to insist that while the new Red Bull car felt "fine", he did not know where they stood.
"To be honest I haven't seen much of other cars on the track," he shrugged, "Obviously I can judge for myself that the feeling is fine but I don't know whether that is good enough or not.
"I think the McLaren looks quite competitive. I think they didn't go for one lap at all but they did long runs etcetera and they looked fairly competitive, so I think they will be strong straight from the beginning of the season."
He added: "I think we saw in Jerez Lotus was quite a surprise, whether they can keep it up or not, I don't know. Today they didn't run much.
"Ferrari is a bit of a secret at this stage and nobody knows whether they are really good or really bad – and I don't know what other people think about us, so we will have to wait and see."
Vettel is aiming to join an elite group of F1 champions who have secured three titles in a row. Only Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher have so far managed such a feat.
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