Ferrari technical director James Allison says that the Italian team made good progress at the first Bahrain test.
Although Kimi Raikkonen had a crash right at the end of the last day the F14 T ran a lot of laps.
“We came to Sakhir aiming to work steadily through the huge list of actions that we must complete,” Allison told the Ferrari website. “We wanted to maximise track time, working methodically in order to be ready for Melbourne. I have to say that, with the exception of the morning of the third day, we did just that.
“We worked on learning how to get the best from the 2014 clutch and on tuning the new brake by wire system. We looked in detail at balancing the temperature of all the cooling fluids, a key part of this year’s rules, and we began gradually expanding the operating window of the new Energy Recovery System.”
Crucially the team was able to move on from systems checking to actually preparing for races.
“We have been able to start to open up our understanding of the handling characteristics of the car and to begin to learn what sort of set-up parameters the tyres respond to. Continuing with this work will be an important part of the programme over the last four days here in Bahrain.
“For the last four days, our programme will see us attempt to operate the car ever more closely to the way that it will run in a race, providing invaluable practice for the drivers and subjecting the car and all its systems to the full rigour that it will need to withstand throughout the season.”
Adam Cooper F1 
I think Ferrari are in pretty good shape. They have a low key plan and a strategy for the beginning of the season and they are keeping to it. I suspect if Ross Brawn was still at Mercedes they would be a bit more low key too. Red Bull must be weeping into their CAD machines when they read of other teams detailed work like this.
Interesting stuff from James Allison.
Analyzing what he says it would appear that Ferrari are on track. As soon as you hit the small fine tuning stage, means that you’ve got the biggest issues sorted / scratched out. That should mean that reliability is not a problem. I don’t see a qualification speed blast mentioned – he talks about race setup, which may send a worrying signal that Ferrari are not looking at pole positions as of yet.
None of the tests so far have featured Quali-ready car, i.e. it always featured aero rakes and Pitot tubes, which are, unsurprisingly, a massive drag penalty.
But let’s see. The team looks quietly confident. And if they are not a bold show-offs at this stage, it means they are going to chase incremental approach to the points or they are really hiding something up their sleeves.