"We are definitely disappointed," said Ferrari's team principal Jean Todt after last Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix. After qualifying one car first and the other third, Todt explained that he and the team were expecting a better result than the eventual third and fifth places for Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa respectively. "Everybody could see that the race got compromised at the start," continued Todt, "where Felipe did not do the best start he could have expected and two of the McLarens passed Felipe, one of them overtook Kimi."

Ferrari strategist Luca Baldisserri clarified the team's start situation. "From our performance, from our data, nothing went wrong," he explained. "We lost performance compared to the others, that's for sure, but we had no particular issue. We have to see what happened, especially close to turn one where Alonso was very very close to Felipe and Felipe didn't tuck into the corner."

Todt went on to explain how the race then developed, costing Felipe another place. "You saw Felipe's attempt to pass Hamilton. He went wide and got passed by two cars and after that we couldn't manage to gain positions. "We know that we are facing very strong teams and quite simply, today they were better and they deserved their success. Nothing to say. Next week, we will try to do a better job."

Todt then explained that following the slight water leak in Raikkonen's engine at the end of the Australian Grand Prix three weeks before, the team had taken precautions just in case the engine was damaged, but with very little time penalty. "We had a concern because of the water leak in Australia but we did not see any evidence to make us change the engine. However, we thought it was wiser to take that into consideration and not to get the utmost from the engine but we are only talking about one tenth of a second a lap. Incidentally, we changed Felipe's engine after the programme problem in the gearbox which he had in Australia, so I think his engine was quite fresh."

However, Raikkonen was slightly handicapped in his chase of Hamilton in the final stages of the race, as Baldisserri explained. "We had seen Hamilton struggling a bit, especially at the beginning of the last stint, and we asked Kimi to try to attack him but at the end of the day, we knew that, as Jean said before, this engine was compromised and although we closed on him it was not enough."
 

However, there were several questions to be answered after the Malaysian Grand Prix. For instance, the cars weren't as quick as they had been in testing and qualifying. "You're right," agreed Baldisserri. "We will analyse our performance. We approached the race being a little bit aggressive in qualifying, compared to our competitor. The start compromised this kind of race so we were behind people with more fuel and this forced us to put a little bit more fuel in the car at the second stint.

"A heavier car here is a penalty and that's the penalty that I think, at the end of the day, we paid today. The car was not performing as Friday, not performing as at the last test. We are analysing the data to understand why. "The only thing I would say again is this is a track where fuel effect is quite important and you measure the car performance comparing cars and you don't know on Friday how much fuel the other team is running so.

"I think this year the tyres have less grip than last year," continued Baldisserri, "so you definitely need the help of the downforce in order to have the performance of the car. If you stay behind another car, you lose downforce and that is why I think this year we will lose more by staying behind other cars, so that is one of the things that unfortunately we have to address." One final mystery was Raikkonen's slightly longer first pit stop. "Yes, we have to analyse that," said Baldisserri. "I haven't checked the video footage, but we have to understand why. I have to check what happened exactly."

Would the Ferraris be more competitive next weekend in Bahrain? "I think we will be competitive," commented a slightly irked Todt. "Three weeks ago we were going to be unbeatable. We said it was not like that. Now it seems that it's all over for us. Again, it's not completely like that. We have a car that I think we should be able to be competitive in Bahrain. Hopefully if do a better start and we should be able to race with our competitors." However, he explained that the cars would be technically unchanged in Bahrain.