Marussia eyes more progress at Malaysian Grand Prix

The team failed to get the car successfully through the FIA's mandatory crash tests in time to make pre-season testing, but followed up a 100km systems check at Silverstone with a trouble-free weekend in Melbourne that witnessed both cars make the finish.

And while Marussia accepts that its car arrives in Sepang largely unchanged from the specification in which it competed at Albert Park, the team sees the race as another opportunity to understand the chassis more fully before adding development parts to it.

"The team and the car faced a tough test in Australia last weekend and both passed with flying colours," said team boss John Booth. "However we are under no illusions that we'll have to work very hard to ensure things continue to go our way this season.

"Our mileage last weekend enabled us to gather plenty of data which has been carefully evaluated over the last few days back at our operational base in Banbury. This will enable us to pinpoint any underlying issues that fortunately did not surface in Melbourne.

"Every new car has its gremlins so we want to get to those as quickly as we can as last year one of our key strengths was our reliability. Once you have a good mechanical baseline - which we have - and a reliable car, that's when you can really start to turn your mind towards development - and we have plenty of that to focus on.

"There won't be any significant changes to the car for this weekend," he added, "given the tight turnaround, but we'll be able to look at optimising the set-up for this circuit."

Marussia's rookie driver Charles Pic is also hoping to continue the trend of gathering extensive mileage.

"I was happy with how things had gone in my first race but there is no time to think about that as we have so much work to do to look ahead for the rest of the season," said the Frenchman. "I learned so much about the new car in such a short space of time and I want to maintain the momentum, so it's good that I don't have to wait two weeks to get back in the car.

"I know this can be a tough race but I'm ready for it and arriving early means I started acclimatising straight away. We will be in a much better position with the car this weekend as we understand more about it."