Russian GP must be Ferrari's lowest ebb of F1 2016 - Arrivabene

Kimi Raikkonen finished a distant third behind the two Mercedes drivers, while Sebastian Vettel was eliminated through an accident that was not his fault. The Ferraris had been 0.7 and 1.2 seconds off the pace in qualifying.

Arrivabene refused to make excuses for Ferrari's troubles and said there can be no more mistakes.

He cited the more favourable tracks at Barcelona and Monaco and the effectiveness of Ferrari's combustion upgrade, introduced at Sochi, as reasons for confidence things will improve.

"On this track, it was expected but I don't want that to happen again," said Arrivabene when asked whether he was surprised by the deficit to Mercedes.

"First of all, we don't have to make any more mistakes on our side.

"Second, I really trust that from now on we can perform much better than we are performing now.

"Because the configuration of the tracks that are coming and because of the tokens that we spent - we are happy this is going to help us more in Spain than the track in Russia."

Arrivabene admitted Ferrari has made things harder for itself this season with its problems but he refused to give up on the team's stated aim of fighting for the championship.

Ferrari has 76 points in the constructors' championship compared to leader Mercedes on 157, while Kimi Raikkonen is best placed in the drivers' standings, 57 points off leader Nico Rosberg.

"If I had to define the championship this year, we are not the kind of team who like to win comfortably and we are looking for a big challenge," said Arrivabene of the regularity with which Ferrari has been on the back foot this year.

"OK, what's happened is part of racing, [in previous race weekends] we had a problem with the software with Sebastian and with the turbo with Kimi.

"But I don't think it's bad luck because nearby to these things there is always a human mistake.

"I prefer to have this kind of problem now rather than having it during the course of the season or later on but we need to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

"Concerning the championship, I don't want the team to, and the team doesn't want to, give up."