Domenicali says Ferrari must raise game

While Kimi Raikkonen won the Malaysian Grand Prix, neither the world champion or teammate Felipe Massa finished the race in Australia. The Brazilian then spun out of the race at Sepang while running second.

The three non-finishes in Melbourne and Sepang have left Ferrari trailing McLaren by 13 points in the constructors' championship, while Raikkonen has scored 11 points to Lewis Hamilton's 14 by dint of the Finn's points score in Australia due to the high attrition rate.

Speaking to Formula One's official website, Domenicali accepted that Ferrari needed to improve their strike rate: "We cannot be satisfied with having only picked up 11 points from the 36 on offer."

"However, this is the responsibility of the team as a whole, its manager, engineers, mechanics and, of course, the drivers: all of us have to improve our performance to reach the standard to which we aspire," he said.

Domenicali also suggested that some of Ferrari's problems in Melbourne had not been down to poor preparation but rather had come about due to the team's unfamiliarity with the standard ECU's introduced to F1 this year.

"As far as we are concerned, Melbourne saw us experience serious reliability problems, but not because we arrived unprepared," he said.

"It was rather the case that this year, everyone with the exception of one team had to deal with a new parameter, the MES central control unit, which still has to reveal all its secrets, especially in terms of the way its operation affects the overall functionality of the car."

Ferrari and Toyota were the only two outfits to partake in a 'hot weather' test at Bahrain prior to the start of the season, but while Domenicali says he expected Raikkonen and Massa to be strong in Sakhir, he didn't think February's test has given them any meaningful advantage.

"I don't think it will be a real advantage come the end of the weekend, especially as the track conditions this weekend will be different to those of early February," he said.

"The decision to go to Bahrain to test was based on the desire to be able to test the car at length in consistent weather conditions in higher temperatures than those normally encountered in Europe in winter."