The biggest losers if Ferrari's worst fears over 2020 car come true

If, as it expects, Ferrari is behind Mercedes and Red Bull in Melbourne this weekend, then it's not just Formula 1 fans hoping for a season-long three-team fight for the titles that surely will be feeling frustrated.

Just as it seemed that rules stability and the varying strengths of the designs produced by the top three teams (Mercedes - all-round downforce, Red Bull - peak downforce, Ferrari - engine power) would set up a battle for the ages in 2020, the projected order in pre-season testing led to Ferrari insisting it had slipped back.

For Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel, the 2020 season was supposed to be about taking the fight to Lewis Hamilton, while also resuming their own private battle for supremacy at Ferrari.

But, although that particular fight will more than likely continue even if Ferrari is off the pace as it is predicting, the potential lack of a world title on the line takes the sting out of the intra-team squabble - to a certain extent.

There are also individual concerns for both Vettel and Leclerc if Ferrari is indeed a firm third in the pecking order.

Vettel is heading towards the latter stages of his F1 career, and still does not have a contract at Ferrari beyond the end of the season about to begin. He also has a worrying trend that he could do with correcting in 2020 - ending up with underwhelming season results when his car has not been in overall title contention.

This first materialised in 2014, when Vettel was eclipsed by newcomer Daniel Ricciardo at the Red Bull team with which he had clinched the previous four world titles. And after a rejuvenating season with three wins on his way to third in the drivers' championship during his first campaign with Ferrari in 2015, the following year he ended up fourth behind Ricciardo and the Mercedes duo, as Ferrari took zero wins.

Again, Vettel proved he could bounce back with two consecutive second places in 2017 and 2018, but errors that crept in during the second of those seasons reoccurred last year and he ended up fifth - his worst result for Ferrari and lowest since that title-winning-run-ending year in 2014.

So, just when Vettel would have hoped he could secure a turnaround in his results with the SF1000, he may have to find other ways to shine - at least in the early part of the season (assuming it goes ahead as expected given the current and ever developing coronavirus situation), as Ferrari maintains that it can recover.

It didn't take Leclerc long to prove he belonged at the highest level in 2019, with his pole and near win in Bahrain

"We are there to fight - that's why we go to Australia," says Vettel, speaking at the conclusion of February's second test. "In any race, you have the chance to win - obviously, the better your car, the better your package, the higher your chances. But I think ultimately, we will know when we get [to Melbourne]. But yeah there's no reason to talk too much now since we haven't started a single race, plus the season will be very long. I think we will have at least 21 races, maybe 22...

"It's a long, long year, a lot of things that will happen. It will be a tough year as well. Obviously, you've got 2021 coming with different regs and so on. So, I think we need to stay concentrated and keep doing our job and not be tempted by, I don't know, making false conclusions too early or too soon in the year."

Leclerc has been riding the crest of a career wave since he first started in the junior categories.

Only his 13th place with Sauber in his rookie F1 season has he finished lower than fourth in the standings - from Formula Renault 2.0, through Formula 3, GP3 and Formula 2 (both of which he won). Without Ferrari's reliability issues in Bahrain and Russia, and that clash with Vettel in Brazil, Leclerc may well have secured third place last year.

It didn't take Leclerc long to prove he belonged at the highest level in 2019, with his pole and near win in Bahrain. And, although he had to work to cut out the early season errors that cost him in Baku and Monaco, by the time Ferrari hit its purple patch after the summer break it was only Vettel's powerful undercut advantage in Singapore that stopped him taking all three of the Scuderia's wins from last year.

But up-and-coming drivers can sometimes suffer when it comes to dealing with setbacks. One example from recent history would be Max Verstappen's poor run of form at the start of 2018 - which occurred while Ricciardo was scoring wins on the other side of the Red Bull garage.

Crucially, Verstappen was able to quickly arrest that slide, and arguably turned in some of the strongest drives over the remainder of that season - starting with his podiums in Canada and France, and then triumph at the Red Bull Ring.

So, if - and of course this is entirely hypothetical at this stage - Leclerc does have to recover from a tough start to 2020, he needs to overcome any issues swiftly.

Fortunately, Leclerc has recent experience he can draw on - his single season with Sauber.

Although Leclerc arrived in F1 as a dominant F2 champion (and the first rookie winner of that title in eight years), it took him four races to produce what many had expected from him with sixth in Azerbaijan, which followed errors in Bahrain qualifying and that year's race in China. A run of five races without points in the middle of that season could have punctured his confidence, but he held on and secured a promotion to Ferrari to seal his rapid rise to the front of the F1 grid.

"Last year, we were pretty sure to know where we were before the first race, but then we arrived at the first race and it was a completely different picture," says Leclerc, also speaking at the end of the second test.

"I'm not sure we will know before the [Melbourne] race. If it's necessary, I don't think so either. For now, we're focusing really on ourself compared to last year, and trying to not look at what the others are doing because we can't control what they are doing, and we can't know what they are doing. I'm pretty sure that we'll arrive in Melbourne not knowing where we are compared to the others."

It could of course be the case that Ferrari's pre-season predictions are wide of the mark - with Valtteri Bottas referring to a "weird game" at the end second test last month regarding the form he felt rival teams had shown in testing. But again, if Ferrari is going to say it is behind its rivals then we must assume that will indeed be the case.

But underwhelming cars can provide drivers with opportunities to enhance their reputations.

If either Leclerc or Vettel can produce performances such as Verstappen's wet weather masterclass to take third in Brazil in 2016 (although the RB12 did claim two wins that year), or can take a difficult car into title contention as Fernando Alonso did in 2012, then Ferrari's 2020 season may not be as frustrating to follow after all.