The Ferrari Formula 1 team showed strong long-run pace during Friday practice that, if repeated on Sunday, could allow it to challenge Mercedes in the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Kimi Raikkonen's headline laptimes caught the attention, as he ended both sessions in second place and exactly 0.373 seconds off the fastest Mercedes.

But it is the Finn's long-run on medium tyres in the Friday afternoon that suggests the car potentially has the pace to race with F1's dominant force.

Raikkonen completed a run of nine flying laps on the medium-compound Pirelli, setting an average laptime of 1m45.080s.

By comparison, Lewis Hamilton averaged 1m45.070s over six laps and Nico Rosberg 1m45.313s over seven laps.

Even more impressive is when you look at comparable length runs, by taking Raikkonen's averages over six and seven laps respectively to compare to the two Mercedes drivers.

Over these adjusted runs, Raikkonen was on average one tenth faster than Hamilton and three tenths quicker than Rosberg.

While Ferrari has tended to show more promising form on Fridays in recent times, and the fact Sebastian Vettel completed his long-run work on the slower hard-compound Pirellis means that only one of the Scuderia's cars can be used for a comparison, this is encouraging for the team.

Technical director James Allison admitted that Ferrari was strong in terms of thermal tyre degradation, but stopped short of declaring his squad was in the hunt for a win.

"I don't know, we'll find out tomorrow and Sunday," he said when asked whether Ferrari could take on Mercedes.

"But we do look like our tyre deg is quite good and we do look as if our pace is reasonably good.

"Everyone uses the Fridays differently, so you never know what the others are doing.

"But it has been a good day."

Allison also suggested that the Australian GP two weeks ago had not allowed the team to show its true pace because it had underachieved in qualifying.

In Melbourne, Vettel finished 43.523s behind racewinner Lewis Hamilton after running fourth behind Felipe Massa's Williams for the first half of the race.

"The delta that we saw in Melbourne was probably a little unkind to us," said Allison.

"We think we probably should have been a little bit ahead of the Williams in qualifying and then driven up the road by 15-20 s more than we did.

"It would be nice to have a clean qualifying here and see what we can do."

AUTOSPORT SAYS...

Analysing long-run pace on Friday can be extremely illuminating, but there are a number of caveats that should prevent us hailing Ferrari has having the potential to out-race Mercedes come Sunday.

Firstly, this analysis can only be based on the available data, making no allowances for fuel load or for the exact programme - and Ferrari has often looked stronger on the opening day of practice than at the business end of the weekend over the past year.

Secondly, things change. Mercedes could be having a difficult day and Ferrari an exceptional one, which could skew the figures.

But while it's desperately unlikely that Ferrari suddenly has a Mercedes-beater on its hands, Allison's suggestion that it should be closer than it was in Australia holds water when you look at the available evidence.

Regardless of what Ferrari is able to do on Sunday, this is further confirmation that it has made a substantial step this season.

The long-term aim is to improve the car and engine package to be able to challenge Mercedes, and Friday shows that Ferrari is on a trajectory that could, eventually, allow it to take on F1's dominant force.

And while the smart money remains on the Mercedes drivers having an advantage, Ferrari's pace could at least allow it to be close enough to capitalise if the Silver Arrows hit trouble.