Ferrari admit they are behind Mercedes going into the opening Grand Prix in Australia.
Ferrari’s new F14 T, has looked a solid and reliable car during the winter.
It hasn’t blazed it’s way to the fastest laps, but it hasn’t been horridly unreliable like other teams have had to contend with.
It looks a solid car, following the radical changes that Formula One has gone through since the end of last season.
New aerodynamic regulations and engine changes have been a big challenge for the teams, but Ferrari look like they have built some solid foundations for the upcoming season.
‘With such an incredible change in the regulations only three sessions are not enough because every day that you run you discover a lot of things that have to be fixed,’ Ferrari Team Principal Stefano Domenicali told Sky Sports.
Domenicali praised the work completed by both Mercedes and Williams Mercedes during the three winter test sessions in Spain and Bahrain.
Mercedes and Williams topped both the time sheets and the mileage sheets after 12 days of winter testing.
Fernando Alonso set the fifth fastest time in Bahrain, a second behind former team-mate Felipe Massa, who moved to Williams at the end of last season.
Whilst Mercedes completed around 485km of extra running in comparison to Ferrari.
‘For sure at the end of this session we have done around 4,000km, Mercedes almost close to 5,000km and Williams more or less close to that number.
‘That means at the end of the day they have prepared better the start of the season. It’s a fact so we need to start from this consideration knowing there is a huge amount of work to be done. But that’s normal in such a different environment.
‘At the beginning of the season reliability will be the key point. Then of course you start to development and fix the problems that you have seen. I think we can consider what we have seen in the first three sessions Mercedes and Williams seem to be in a very good shape.’
With Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen behind the wheel of the new Ferrari in 2014, it would be a foolish for anyone to discount Ferrari’s chances next season.
Mercedes power might look like the way to go, but Ferrari are unlikely to be far behind.
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