McLaren is too slow, says DC

"I made a reasonable start off the grid and then got stuck behind Sato's BAR," the Scot said. "But although he was holding me up in places, he was quicker than me in others, so I'm not sure it would have made a big difference. And obviously the other guys just disappeared into the distance."

Coulthard added, however, that he was not surprised by the Ferrari performance.

"I did the Imola test and I saw Michael do a lap time at the end of a 15-lap run that was a second quicker than anyone else did on a new tyre run, so it wasn't really a shock for me. But there's so much hype and bull during the winter. This is where you judge if you are fast and reliable. We've had a 50% reliability result here and obviously we're not fast enough".

McLaren has just a single test planned before the Malaysian Grand Prix on March 21.

"There won't be anything coming from the engine in one test," DC explained, "but there might be something coming on set-up. We've got a front wing that maybe we can confirm is a little better because we only had it at Imola when it was damp and didn't get a good read on it.

"So, aero wise we might take a step forward. We've pretty much chosen our tyre. We have reasonable confidence in Malaysia last year based on the upgrades Michelin has done. It's other areas we need to work on. I think we should be quicker there, but it's going to be tough."