Ferrari is still almost a second off the ultimate pace says technical director Pat Fry

Alonso took a shock victory in the damp in Malaysia, and finished fifth in Australia - despite Ferrari struggling for speed.

Fry said Ferrari owed its position to both Alonso's heroics, and the Sepang weather working in its favour.

"I certainly wasn't expecting to have one driver leading the championship," he said. "From quite early on in testing, we realised we had quite a few issues we needed to sort out.

"Everyone at the factory has been working hard at that, as we still have a long way to go. I think our dry qualifying performance is still around 0.8s off the best while we want to be the best ourselves.

"Damp low grip conditions suit our car and flatter some of the issues we have with the F2012 at the moment. You could see that in Melbourne on Friday and again in the race in Malaysia."

He added that Ferrari was trying to accelerate its development to get out of its current plight, and would have some upgrades for China this weekend then a major package in Spain next month.

"We are constantly working on improving the issues we have," said Fry. "New parts are coming through and we are trying to get them to the racetrack as quickly as possible - we will have five updates for China, some are quite visible, others less so. Then there will be a bigger upgrade package for Spain.

"It would be nice to have them earlier, but we have already brought forward some parts we were developing for Spain and we should have them in China."