Michael Schumacher believes Ferrari will be the team to beat when the new Formula One season begins in two weeks' time.

Schumacher has ended his three-year retirement to drive for Mercedes GP in 2010 but has been impressed with the speed of the two Ferraris – driven by Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso – during pre-season testing in Jerez.

The 41-year-old German was more than a second slower than Alonso during the early practice sessions on Friday.

"Felipe and Fernando look the target," admitted Schumacher, who won five of his seven world titles with the Italian team.

"Ferrari have done very good testing and things look good. I know them and there are good reasons to be happy."

Meanwhile, Schumacher has denied suggesting that Mercedes – who took over title sponsorship of the Brawn GP team during the winter – could struggle in the opening weeks of the new campaign.

"I did not only say this on Friday," he explained. "I said this right away from the beginning that we might not be in a position to win the first races.

"But that is not really important as you have to win by the end of the season and not the beginning.

"Probably this could be the case, although I mentioned it on Friday after not studying the data.

"This was an initial feeling and it looks like that maybe we were running more fuel than others on Friday and that is why track times didn't look so good.

"Now I've looked at the data it looks not so bad, it looks very reasonable. So let's see where we are in reality."

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