With its first podium of the season now secured, Ferrari Technical Director James Allison says improvements race-by-race are the key.

The Maranello outfit, still reeling from a poor start to the season, which culminated in team boss Stefano Domenicali falling on his sword, can at least take some comfort from the fact that Fernando Alonso scored the team's first podium result of the year in China. That said, the result was more about the driver than the F14 T, the Spaniard, not for the first time in his career, performing miracles with machinery not deserving of his talent.

Currently fourth in the title race, James Allison believes Ferrari can yet battle for honours but the team must make improvements on a race-by-race basis.

"Where did we see the real performance level of the car? Bahrain or China?" he asks on his team's website. "It's a mistake to think in those terms, because it wasn't the same car at the two tracks. Between those two races, we improved the car quite substantially, so not only did the track characteristics change, so did our car.

"We are learning how to get performance out of this new set of regulations and hopefully to make this car more competitive," he continues. "The key to a successful season is to keep improving your car at every race. If we can do that, bringing a meaningful amount of performance to every one of those races, we will keep seeing steps forward. And that will define what is the true F14 T, not just one single race."

Turning his attention to the drivers, where Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen are experiencing a similar difference in results as Vettel and Ricciardo at Red Bull, the Englishman insists that the Finn will come good.

"With Fernando we've seen an extraordinary level of performance, scavenging every possible point at every possible opportunity. Kimi is working extremely well with the team, collaborating with the engineers, helping us to drive this car forwards. He has class written all over him and in a very short space of time, I'm sure we will also see the results of that on the track."

Chris Balfe