Ferrari: Prancing or limping horse?

Kimi Raikkonen has never been a man for hyberbole.

While Mercedes takes the plaudits and Renault fends off the brickbats, his Ferrari team has quietly and unobtrusively gone about its business. Ultimately, that's what testing is all about.

But with the car's fastest lap in five days of testing in Bahrain 3.233s off the fastest time, there are question marks over just how things are shaping up for the Scuderia. Not that Raikkonen is letting anything slip in public.

"It's not always the numbers that show the true potential," he said after his frustrating day of running, which included a long spell on the sidelines. He is, of course, absolutely right.

Ferrari is emphatically not over three seconds off the pace. Rosberg's mark from last Saturday was set on a qualifying simulation on soft rubber and neither the Finn nor team-mate Fernando Alonso have run in that trim in Bahrain.

But what is beyond question is that Mercedes's programme is further down the road, with more than one race sim, proper qualifying work and what seems to be as smooth progress as could realistically be hoped for given the scale of the changes in the 2014 regulations.

Raikkonen facing the media © LAT

So what do we know about Ferrari? Well, there were aerodynamic upgrades on the car today, so it's clear that progress is being made on that front. The engine seems to work adequately enough, although there is a feeling that it is giving something away to Mercedes.

With rumours flying around about a 75bhp peak power deficit, Raikkonen played things down. But was there a moment in his answer when he was about to allude to the possibility of a power disadvantage before checking himself?

"No," he said when asked if he was concerned. "There was a lot of talk even before any of the cars had been on the circuit that the Mercedes is the most powerful, but I don't know."

Now comes the interesting bit: "I mean, maybe... I seriously don't know."

It's dangerous to read too much into such pauses, especially coming from non-native English speakers. Doubly so when they are Finnish. But was Raikkonen perhaps about to say Ferrari is perhaps a little down on power?

Impossible to say. But had he said that it probably wouldn't have been far from the truth.

"I'm guessing as is everybody else," continued Raikkonen. "But I haven't even looked and seen a car on the circuit yet other than maybe passing or letting them through from the outside.

"We have put our own things first and tried to improve stuff. In the races, we will see."

It will be in Australia and the following races that the meaningful numbers - qualifying and race results - are produced. What is encouraging is that Ferrari hasn't resorted to pulling glory runs out of the bag in an attempt to mollify the Italian media. If that happens, then things are bad. There is no panic at Ferrari.

The overwhelming sense is of wait and see until we witness these cars in battle in race trim. After all, if Mercedes can run more powerfully, it is possibly using greater boost pressure (which is unrestricted, beyond the natural limit created by the 100kg/hour peak fuel-flow limit) and more fuel. Peak power is less an indicator of the competitiveness of a car/engine package than it has ever been.

The work Ferrari has been doing is, in between the standard troubleshooting of problems that crop up, systematic and not designed to grab headlines. Progress has been good with the rear brake-by-wire system and there's satisfaction that the team has a relatively good handle on the strategies needed to run in race trim. There's still a long way to go, the question is where Ferrari and its power unit stands relative to Mercedes once they get four months down the line and the low-hanging fruit has all been picked.

Only Alonso has done a race sim so far © LAT

There is also a keen focus on ensuring its drivers are completely happy with the way the car is behaving. With executing race strategies arguably more challenging than ever before in 2014, who better to have in the cockpit than Alonso and Raikkonen?

But what we can see is a pattern whereby the Ferrari-powered teams look like they are playing catch-up. Adrian Sutil, admittedly in a difficult-to-drive Sauber that has spat him off the road several times already pre-season, confirmed he did some qualifying work today.

"We wanted to do a bit of qualifying work with the softer tyres and also the supersoft, which was interesting," said Sutil, whose fastest time of the day, a 1m37.7s, was set on fresh, soft-compound Pirellis.

Even if that wasn't a full-blown qualifying run on fumes, meaning there was more fuel weight in the car, that still puts the pace of the Sauber significantly off that of Rosberg. Let's allow for a generous 25kg fuel load (conservative for qualifying), which could add around three-quarters of a second to the car pace.

That could take him down to a round 1m37s dead, still over three seconds off Rosberg's mark from last week (assuming Rosberg was on an ultra-low fuel run). Conditions were warmer today and the track a little slower as well, but there is a deficit there. How much is car and how much is engine is an unsolvable equation right now.

Now, the Ferrari is a better car than the Sauber, which has proved a troublesome beast in testing, but even so some of that potential deficit has to be attributable to the engine.

"On the engine side, you would see big improvements, " said Sutil when asked what could be achieved with the Sauber given more running. "There are so many parameters that are unknown - the drivetrain, the power unit - to use it the optimal way is very complex for the engineers.

"To be on the optimum side, you just need to practice. We won't be on the optimum side with the fuel straight away in the race."

The point Sutil makes is very valid. The complexities of running these engines, understanding the best way to do so, how the mapping influences the balance of the car and impact the driving style are enormous. Nobody knows how it will all pan out in Melbourne, even though the feeling at Ferrari is that, right now, Mercedes probably does have the edge.

But this is a long game. What happens in Australia might be very different to how things shake out by the time F1 gets to the Spanish GP in May.

Right now, Ferrari is playing the long game. It's a cliche, but F1 2014 really is a marathon, not a sprint.