Ferrari got a head start with its title-challenging car for 2017 according to Toto Wolff, boss of the Mercedes team, which won the last three drivers' and constructors' championships.

Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel is now 25 points ahead of Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton in this year's chase, while the Italian team is leading Mercedes by 17 in the constructors' standings.

"To our knowledge, Ferrari started development of its car very early -- in December 2015. For us, it was only March 2016," Wolff told Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "By then, Ferrari already had more than 50 percent of its resources on the new car."

"Ferrari has perhaps a 16-week lead, and in that time you can find downforce worth four- or five-tenths," said Wolff.

As far as the drivers' crown goes, Ferrari might also be angling in favor of Vettel without actually issuing team orders. The team is denying it, but there are suspicions Kimi Raikkonen was deliberately disadvantaged by Ferrari so that Vettel could win last Sunday at Monaco.

"Of course you have to ask that question, even if there was no need for them to do so," former F1 driver Alex Wurz told the Austrian broadcaster ORF. "But obviously the world championship is in the foreground."

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