Sebastian Vettel believes Mercedes was not racing to its full potential for the second race in a row at the Bahrain Grand Prix.

At the Chinese Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton deliberately drove below the potential of the car in the second stint in order to save tyres, much to the annoyance of his team-mate Nico Rosberg behind. In Bahrain the tyre management was less obvious from the outside, but once again the gaps between the top three closed in the second stint.

Vettel, who was running third in the second stint but dropped to fifth with front wing damage, believes Mercedes was trying to manage the race and ultimately saw it backfire when Nico Rosberg encountered brake problems on lap 56 and lost position to Raikkonen.

"I think they had a very strong pace in the race, probably more than they showed in the middle stint, so I think we were artificially a little bit closer," Vettel said. "But equally it worked pretty well for us as a team because they slowed themselves down in comparison to Kimi and he was able to catch them at the end."

Asked directly whether Mercedes might be sandbagging this year in response to pressure from the sport to make racing more exciting, Vettel added: "I don't think they are trying to do something stupid. I'm sure Lewis and Nico are pushing as hard as they can and the first stop was very close when we all came out of the pits, even between Nico and Lewis.

"So I don't think they were sandbagging at that point, but I think the second stint they were managing a little bit more the tyres just because you can when you are in the lead and you have free air.

"You are free to do what you like because you know that for many laps you won't get undercut [at the next pit stops] because that wouldn't make much sense [to pit again so soon]. But that's normal I think. Last year we didn't see them sandbagging but they had way less reason than this year. "