Fresh off the back of a disappointing end to the 2010 season, Ferrari are once again trying to establish what they've been doing wrong.

The Scuderia's form in pre-season testing indicated that 2011 was going to be a good year for the team. The 150° Italia logged more miles in Spain than any other car, and reliability was looking good. While the Ferrari drivers were not top of the timesheets in every test session, they were within reach of the leaders on those days when their test programme had involved longer runs on heavy fuel loads.

While Felipe Massa struggled on the 2010 Bridgestone tyres, the Brazilian driver was buoyant at the team's car launch, where he told the assorted media that his first impressions of the Pirelli tyres had been very positive.

"I also liked the Pirelli tyres from the first time I tried [them]," Massa said in January. "Definitely. I tried with the old [2010] car, and it might be different with the new car, but anyway I think it was a good feeling straight away."

But fast-forward nearly three months to the Australian Grand Prix, and both Massa and teammate Fernando Alonso were significantly off the pace of frontrunner Sebastian Vettel. While fellow Red Bull driver Mark Webber struggled to match his teammate for pace, the assumption in the paddock had been that Red Bull and Ferrari were the teams to watch this season, and that McLaren had a lot of catching up to do.

McLaren did a tremendous job in turning their car around before the Melbourne race, but Ferrari appears to have slid backwards as their opponents were moving forwards.

Speaking to the Ferrari website in the team's review of the weekend, Massa said "if there is one lesson we take away with us after the opening round it is that we have a lot of work to do. We urgently need to find out exactly what happened in Australia, understanding what we did and what the other teams did."

While one race does not determine a season, it is vital for their championship chances that the Scuderia establish whether their Melbourne problems were down to a poor choice of set-up or a sign of a more fundamental issue with the car.

Massa believes it's the former.

"Our car is better than it looked in Melbourne," he said, "and it is hard to explain exactly why we failed to deliver, which is why we have to arrive in Malaysia with the car we actually built, not the car we raced last weekend."

The Malaysian Grand Prix is going to be a very different race to the Australian event, that much is certain. Where track temperatures in Melbourne hovered around 20°C in practice and qualifying, temperatures in Sepang are usually in the 40°C range, if not hotter. Any driver who had trouble getting maximum performance out of his tyres in Australia is likely to have an easier time of it when the circus moves to Sepang. Add to that the strong chance of rain during qualifying and the race and it is fair to say that form in Melbourne does not form in Malaysia make.

With only one race under our belts it is far too early to start writing off teams and drivers. We could be half-way through the season on a similar run of form, however, and this writer's response would be the same - Ferrari is a team you write off at your peril. The Scuderia are accustomed to winning races, and they're capable of performing miracles to ensure it happens.