The questions Ferrari must answer

The nearer to the top of the ladder you are, the more difficult it is to take the step to the next rung. The same is true of Formula 1 car development.

When the regulations change significantly - as they did for the 2014 season and, before that, in '09 - someone always gets the jump on the others. For the current set of rules that team is Mercedes, which had, previously, underperformed after taking over the Brawn team that had so much success the last time the rules changed.

Everything points to the Mercedes power unit package being the best in the pitlane, but I have no doubt that the chassis has backed this up. The car is competitive on all types of circuit and it usually gets the best out of the tyres over one lap. It's also been as good as any other chassis with regard to degradation, so overall it's a solid all-round package that will take some beating.

If any team can do that, it has to be Ferrari. On a few occasions in 2015 it took the fight to Mercedes but didn't have the last bit of performance needed to do so consistently. So there were a few great days in Malaysia, Hungary and Singapore, but the championship was never on.

From 2014 to '15 Ferrari made up a lot of ground, finishing second in the constructors' championship after the previous year's very distant fourth. I believe most of that gain came from power unit improvements as, at the start of 2014, Mercedes caught everyone with their trousers down on that side.

During the 2015 season, Ferrari didn't really close the gap to Mercedes. Some tracks suited one chassis a little better than the other, but based on average fastest laps of the weekend, there was still about 0.8 per cent between them in terms of pace. So around a theoretical 90-second lap, that equates to 0.72s.

Ferrari was able to spring the odd surprise in '14, but couldn't sustain a challenge against Mercedes © LAT

Ferrari will have been pretty confident about which areas needed to be worked on. It will have drilled deep into every bit of data on Mercedes from the 2015 season and compared it to its own performance. But what is key is deciding what direction to go in to close that gap.

There are still gains to be made with power unit performance, but don't underestimate how much Mercedes will be able to find in this area. Gaining ground isn't just about improving your own package, it's about improving as much as your rivals and then improving some more on top.

On the chassis side, if you are lacking overall downforce do you decide to push ahead and find some more at the expense of aero sensitivity?

If you don't feel the drivers are able to use that downforce to the maximum, do you then try to reduce the sensitivity and give the driver a more consistent package?

Do you work more on centre-of-pressure shift with steering or yaw and try to make it work more for you when you need it?

These are just a few of the many questions technical director James Allison will have had to find answers for. Once that's done, he will put together a specification for the new car and it is then up to everyone in their individual departments to pull together and achieve that objective.

This spec is a living thing that evolves, but it must be in place before the previous year's August break. If it is achieved too early, then the targets can be reviewed, but from that point the direction is defined and it is all about optimising a concept.

The big problem is that if you just keep doing what you have done previously, then you will probably end up with the same inherent problems.

Every year you have to look deeper at how and what you research. No team understands 100 per cent of what makes a racing car fast and sometimes you can luck in. But normally, you luck out.

Ferrari is the only team to have persisted with the long nose © LAT

Let's say that frontrunning team 'x' understands 80 per cent of what it takes to make a car fast. That means it doesn't understand 20 per cent. One year that team lucks in and doesn't make any mistakes in that 20 per cent area. But the next year, a mistake is made and the team lucks out and the car does not perform as it should.

Everyone in the team pushes in the areas they normally research, but they find everything in those areas is superior to the previous year. So everyone scratches their heads until they look outside of the 80 per cent box. Suddenly, something will click and that window of risk might be reduced to 15 per cent of the car.

If I was involved with Ferrari, the first question I would be trying to answer is why it doesn't seem to get much from the shorter nose concept. Everyone else has gone in that direction and has been able to introduce this style of development mid-season. Given that changing the front crash structure is not cheap, the reward must be significant.

The front wing and nose area defines the airflow through the rest of the car. Get this right and the rest of the car will respond. Get it wrong and getting more downforce from the car will be like plucking teeth from a chicken.

I have no doubt Ferrari has looked at this area in fine detail. The one thing that can have a major influence is the pullrod front suspension. Suspension, especially at the front, is not just to hold the wheel on as it acts to manage the airflow coming off the front wing.

It would be very easy to have something wrong in this area and, in turn, not get the response from the nose concept that seems to suit everyone else.

Vettel had a strong first season with Ferrari, and will have more influence on this year's design © LAT

It could very easily be something like this that meant it went through 2015 with that 0.8 per cent deficit to Mercedes. Ferrari did all the research, but didn't get the reward because something was overpowering the outcome.

One area where Ferrari will definitely gain is having Sebastian Vettel in his second year. Fernando Alonso's time at Ferrari was effectively over a year or even two before he eventually moved on, so as far as the chassis is concerned they will have had a much higher level of input from Vettel over 2015 than they had the previous year. So that is a definite positive.

But for all this, Mercedes will not be standing still. We hear a lot about conservative or aggressive concepts and for sure there is a difference.

Take McLaren's 'zero size' aero package. That's what I call aggressive, but if you're going to put yourself there you need to make sure you have a way out if it all goes wrong.

I think Mercedes has enough data in its sat nav to make sure it doesn't go down the wrong route. Mercedes wants a third world championship and it also knows that if it doesn't take too many risks then that is possible.

Still it can only expect the gap to those behind, led by Ferrari, to close in 2016. The regulations will be going into their third year and as we have seen from the past, the longer the regulations stay stable the closer the grid gets.

Roll on the start of the season.