Ferrari F1 team won't 'surrender' in face of Mercedes' performance

Hopes of a stronger Ferrari challenge to pacesetter Mercedes were high after the Scuderia dipped into its token allocation to upgrade its engine ahead of the Montreal race.

But a scrappy weekend ended with Kimi Raikkonen finishing fourth after a spin and Sebastian Vettel recovering to fifth having started 18th because of a power loss problem in qualifying and penalty for passing under red flags in practice.

When asked whether the disappointing result would change Ferrari's targets, Arrivabene said: "No, absolutely no change.

"If I am going to change the objectives it's like I'm going to say we've surrendered.

"If you go every race to the podium it becomes boring, but when you go down from the podium it is worse.

"I think we need to keep our position on the podium and look up, not look down.

"I haven't changed the objectives, no way."

Arrivabene insisted the engine upgrade was a success but said the team needed to be humble in recognising Mercedes is simply stronger at present.

"I think the engine upgrade was giving us the positive answer we've been asking for," he said.

"Unfortunately the weekend was not a good one for a number of circumstances that are in front of everybody, but the response we got from the engine was good.

"It's a long way to go. We need to have a bit of humility to recognise that at the moment they are stronger than us without thinking we close the gap so we can beat them every race.

"This is not realistic, honestly, but the answer that we got this weekend was quite good."