Massa confident of Ferrari reliability

The Brazilian and teammate Kimi Raikkonen endured a troubled weekend in Melbourne, and both retired from the race with engine failures - which some suggested could have been caused by the higher than usual temperatures.

But Massa is optimistic that there will be no repeat of the dramas this weekend, and that Ferrari can kick-start their campaign in Malaysia.

"We will put new engines in the car and for sure we can go to the end of two races now," he said. "It wasn't the temperature that affected our engines, it was something else which we need to discover very quickly.

"We need to start a new championship from Malaysia. The championship is long, we know points are very important but we know also that many things can happen in every race."

Ferrari were set to fly the Australian power units back to their Maranello base for a series of evaluations to work out exactly what went wrong, in a bid to find solutions for Malaysia.