Form guide: Mercedes and Lotus join Red Bull's party

Yeongam has taken us away from the relentless slow-speed, long-duration corners of Singapore and into a more conventionally configured circuit - and suddenly the Red Bull's advantage does not look as outrageous.

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest headline/low-fuel time, a tenth of a second quicker than Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull, with Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) and Mark Webber (Red Bull) closely matched just behind. On one-lap pace there is then a significant gap back to Ferrari and Lotus.

Looking to the numbers of the longer runs there was no apparent Red Bull advantage at all. In fact, quickest on the softer, super-soft tyre was Kimi Raikkonen's Lotus ahead of Rosberg and the second Lotus of Romain Grosjean. On the medium prime tyre, Hamilton put together the fastest average, though it was of relatively short duration.

Vettel had only the equal-third-quickest long-run average on the option tyre, at 0.5s slower than Raikkonen (taking out the anomalous third Vettel lap, which was compromised by traffic). That sounds suspiciously too far off the pace for a Red Bull, suggesting the team may have been loading the car with fuel in a bid to really test the tyre's endurance.

The circuit's schizophrenic layout - it has a Monza-like first section with a super-long straight, a quick, flowing Silverstone-like middle sector and a Singapore-like final sector compromising lots of tight turns between walls - had Red Bull experimenting with different rear wing levels, using a fairly low-downforce version in the afternoon that gave the cars competitive end-of-straight speed but not the ultimate grip, especially in the final sector.

Nonetheless, we do not seriously believe that Red Bull is half-a-second off the ultimate race pace here. What is clear though is that the long-wheelbase Lotus is particularly good with the tyres over a run but may lack the sort of qualifying pace that Romain Grosjean showed in Singapore.

Both tyres showed good durability and low degradation rates. The limitation is wear of the front-right tyre but a two-stop looks to be easily achievable. There is quite a close match in the long-run performance of the two tyres, even though the super-soft is almost a second faster in qualifying use. This opens the way for a variety of different tyre strategies.

Mercedes didn't look quite as strong as Lotus in the long runs but competitive nonetheless - and much better in qualifying. Hamilton appears to be enjoying the circuit and has so far had a small edge over team-mate Rosberg on single-lap pace, but on their option runs Rosberg was four tenths faster.

They absolutely look primed for a fight for pole with Red Bull - and if they can achieve that, the low degradation rates might then allow them to fight for the victory too.

Neither the Ferrari nor the McLaren seemed to pick up as much qualifying time on the softer tyre as the frontrunning cars. Felipe Massa did a reasonable long-run sequence on the option tyre, good enough to suggest that Fernando Alonso could be a podium threat once again even if qualifying better than the third row looks unlikely for him.