Ferrari technical director James Allison has described the team’s form in Australia as “not acceptable,” and says that straightline speed and braking stability – a big problem for Kimi Raikkonen in particular – are among the key areas for improvement.
Fernando Alonso finished 35 seconds behind winner Nico Rosberg, who is assumed by most observers to have had a lot in hand.
“Our competitiveness was not acceptable in Melbourne,” Allison told the Ferrari website. “But we intend to fight our way back up the grid with the improvements that we will bring to the car.
“While we can take some satisfaction from the reliability shown by the F14T, it is clear that we have our work cut out to improve our car in order to compete on equal terms with the Mercedes team. There is plenty about the F14T that is working very well. The starts and the pace in the corners – especially the high speed ones – are particular strong points, but we need to work further on the stability under braking, and the speed on the straights.”
Allison remains confident that there is time to recover.
“All the recent seasons in F1 have been characterised by a fierce development battle from March until November. With all the new regulations this year, the opportunities to improve the car are legion, and we can expect the race to improve the cars to be even more intense than normal.”
Adam Cooper's F1 Blog 
Ferrari have their work cut out now!!!? You should have got it right pre-season, but instead we now find we have an overweight AND underpowered power unit , along with poor aero and poor stability!!! This team is fast becoming a joke!!!
I feel for Fernando after all the hard work he has done trying to make the last 5 cars from Ferrari competitive!! If only he had signed for Bullcrappers first he might already be a 6 or 7 times WDC by now!!!
True story… Or even if he’d received the necessary support from Mclare, he would have on 07, 08, 10, at least.
Red Bull finished 22s off the lead last year and Mercedes 45s. And I seem to recall Red Bull has spent years being good in fast corners and down on straight line speed.
Its a long old season. Let’s see what it brings in terms of the development cycle. Its why I fear for Williams as they won’t have the cash to compete at the development pace I suspect is going to happen this year and they already failed to max out their potential at the first race. And I want to see what some heat in Malaysia brings out re engines and tyres! Adam can probably tell us but it looked cold in Melbourne.
I think Ferrari struggles in F1 for the same reason the English national team struggles in football.
The key knowledge base for F1 is in England (in the same way as the key football knowledge base is Continental Europe), most teams are based there and so information transfers easily as staff move. Ferrari is based so far away from that key area that, apart from an occasional high profile signing, it struggles to tap into what everybody else is doing and is caught out by developments.
The recent big name signings will help a lot – as it did in the 90s with Byrne and Brawn etc, but the harsh reality is that for sporting reasons to get the best bang for their buck Ferrari should swap Maranello for MK although I’m sure they’d rather finish 2nd that do that…