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Stefano Domenicali remains optimistic that Ferrari can still close the gap to Mercedes, given that everyone has a lot of scope to improve this year.

In Malaysia Fernando Alonso eventually finished some 34.9s down on winner Lewis Hamilton, although he was at least able to hang onto the Red Bulls in the early part of the race. By co-incidence the margin in Australia was 35.2s. However, it would have been greater without the safety car.

“I don’t think the gap with Red Bull was so big to be honest,” he said. “Today we were suffering from the fact that with these hard tyres with this heat it was really about traction, the fact that they didn’t fit the cars as we wanted. I think that with Mercedes there’s still a big gap, with Red Bull, with the others, I’m not so sure.

“We’re more or less close to that field, but we aim to be on top. I think that for sure sure what we are seeing is not something easy to solve, but what I’ve asked to my engineers is to make sure that they know what they have to do and make sure they put in place plans to close the gap which so far is there, because it’s really clear.”

Domenicali was reluctant to suggest where the weakness in the package is.

“It’s difficult to say. When we speak about power unit, it could be the power delivery, because it’s part mechanical part electric, for sure that’s an important part. But also on the car side I want to make sure that the aerodynamic guys push the car to be more efficient, to be better.

“For sure we need to improve a lot the areas of power delivery, traction, efficiency of the car, set-up wise, balance wise, so we need to improve at all levels. With these new regulations the gaps will be shortened very quickly.”

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.”

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.”

Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali says that the first outing of the Ferrari F14 T in Jerez last week represented a good starting point for the team.

After some early gremlins the car ran reliably, and while Mercedes powered rivals were ultimately faster, the main aim was to put miles on the new machine and correlate its behaviour with the wind tunnel.

“These were four very demanding and important days to give us something to work on over the coming days in Maranello,” Domenicali told the Ferrari website. “The technical parameters of the F14 T, as well as the aerodynamic validation we saw on track, match our expectations and provide a solid starting point, which we must now exploit as much as possible.

“In Jerez, we concentrated our efforts on fine tuning the new systems to ensure that all the components that make up the new power unit were working as well as possible, and the team was focused on its tasks. I was also very pleased to see, even if was hardly a surprise, how our drivers worked in harmony and that they have already provided excellent feedback relating to the development of the car.”

Despite his optimism Domenicali said it was way too early to make any judgements about the relative form of the top teams.

“We can’t evaluate performance levels at the moment, neither that of the F14 T, nor those of our rivals. The important thing is to do as many laps as possible to give our engineers the data they need to continue with the development of the car. It would be premature to make any precise evaluations. What counts for more is to have clear ideas on what we must do now and on the direction to take, so that we arrive in Melbourne in the best possible shape.”