Thought to be over half-a-second off the pace of the Mercedes, Ferrari Technical Director James Allison admits the team has much work to do.

"While we can take some satisfaction from the reliability shown by the F14T, it is clear that we have our work cut out to improve our car in order to compete on equal terms with the Mercedes team," said the Englishman.

"There is plenty about the F14T that is working very well," he insists. "The starts and the pace in the corners, especially the high speed ones, are particular strong points, but we need to work further on the stability under braking and the speed on the straights."

Whilst the car's reliability was encouraging, there is still room for improvement to ensure that the new and complex power unit works at its best. However, the main task facing the team at the moment is increasing the efficiency of the F14T.

"All the recent seasons in F1 have been characterised by a fierce development battle from March until November," said Allison. "With all the new regulations this year, the opportunities to improve the car are legion and we can expect the race to improve the cars to be even more intense than normal.

"Our competitiveness was not acceptable in Melbourne," he admitted. "But we intend to fight our way back up the grid with the improvements that we will bring to the car."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by ape, 18/03/2014 20:52

"As usual they better give up this year and start with the next year car . LOL The old Agnelli lapdog thought he could do himself what Todt did ! No way !"

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2. Posted by Spindoctor, 18/03/2014 13:19

"As I recall, two Ferraris finished, while only 1 Mercedes managed that. So Ferrari have gained 100% more data than Mercedes and I'm sure that will prove highly useful in developing the car. Without being too clichéd about things there is the story of the Tortoise & the Hare. To finish first, you've first got to finish. I'm hopeful (as a McLaren fan) that Ferrari and all the others will catch up quite a lot of the ground in car terms fairly quickly. The "power units" are another matter, and it seems that the Mercedes unit has a significant advantage.

If I were Ferrari, I'd be more than worried about this, especially as it was pretty obvious that Kimi was struggling badly under braking. Hopefully this was a fault, but otherwise it indicates that Ferrari is down on both power and energy recuperation."

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3. Posted by nonickname, 18/03/2014 9:54

"I think we heard the same last year and the year before!"

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Allison: Our competitiveness was not acceptable

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