Ferrari expects hard weekend in Bahrain

The team has endured its worst start to a season since 1981, having failed to score any points in the first three races, with its car not being fast nor reliable.

Domenicali is pinning his hopes on the improvements to be introduced in the car for the Spanish Grand Prix, which will mark the start of the European season.

In the meantime, however, the Italian is expecting his team to continue with its difficulties.

"We have endured a very difficult start to the season," said Domenicali. "We knew we would suffer in China and in all probability, we will be suffering again here this weekend.

"After that, it is to be hoped that we will make a step forward as from the Spanish Grand Prix, even allowing for the fact that we cannot expect those teams currently ahead of us to wait for us to catch up and they too will be developing their cars further.

"However, the most important point is that the entire team and everyone at Maranello, is working very hard to extricate itself from this situation as soon as possible. We have no points yet and so the gap to the leaders is a big one, but I want to make it very clear that we have absolutely not given up fighting for this year's championship titles.

"And why should we, when theoretically there are still 252 points available this season per team. Development will be ongoing, as it is every year and this will continue whatever the results over the next few races.

"Even if the situation was worse than this, we still would not give up because this is absolutely not part of the Ferrari philosophy and, with the same group of people we have now, we have fought back from situations like this, from situations which the outside world saw as impossible. The same group of people have won three of the last four titles available over the past two years."

Domenicali, who suggested after the Chinese GP that Ferrari could shift its focus to 2010 early if it continues with its problems, insisted that there is no reason to give up.

"The lesson to be learned from this is that it is far too early to draw conclusions about how the season will evolve," said Domenicali. "That is further reason for Ferrari not to give up on chasing its aim of winning the titles."