Fernando Alonso said Ferrari is in for "a difficult weekend" following Friday practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Having spent much of the morning session carrying out constant speed tests for aerodynamic purposes, Alonso and Felipe Massa struggled in the afternoon session as teams conducted longer runs with heavy fuel on the soft tyre. Alonso said that it had been a bad day for the team and that it was not in a position to challenge for victory.
"Given how things went today, it looks like being a difficult weekend, but we will do all we can to get close to the quickest," Alonso said. "Today, things did not go well and we struggled to find a good balance on the car, so this evening we will look at how we can improve. On a track like this, with such variable weather and with tyre degradation being what it is, there will be a lot of factors in play in the fight for the top places and just being quickest will not be enough.
"This morning we did a lot of work on the aerodynamics to understand what had not worked the way we had expected in Australia, but even if we had been quick in Melbourne, there would still be work to do. This is only the start of the season: we are not quick enough to fight for the win and pole position, but that does not mean that we have to throw in the towel. Instead we have to step up our efforts to quickly reduce the gap that separates us from those who have done a better job than us."
Massa was quicker than his team-mate in both sessions, but also well off the pace of the Red Bulls and McLarens. He admitted that he was disappointed with the progress Ferrari had made since Malaysia, but said the weather could help salvage its weekend.
"It's logical that I had expected and had hoped to be quicker, especially when compared to the two teams that are clearly in front," Massa said. "Let's see what we can do between this evening and tomorrow to improve the car. There is not much grip and also tyre degradation is very high and, as could be seen in the final part of the second session, when everyone was presumably running with a heavy fuel load, we were not the only ones having a problem.
"If the race was to take place in the dry, choosing the right strategy would be very complicated. The soft tyres work better, giving much more grip and they are much quicker, although there is a lot of degradation. The hard seems to be slower and, at first, seems a bit more consistent, but it does not last that much longer than the other. We will have to be ready for anything this weekend. In the last two days, we have seen that at the time qualifying and the race are due to start, it always rains. If that also happens in the next two days, anything could happen."
Assistant technical director Pat Fry said that while the team had gathered the data that it wanted during the morning session, it appeared to have made little progress from the last race in Melbourne.
"In quantitive terms we achieved our aim because the programme was completed as planned," Fry said. "Now it's up to us to analyse the data and get the answers we are looking for. It will be a tough job, but a vital one to understand in which direction to go in the development of the car.
Having done that, we then concentrated on all the usual Friday tasks, which means looking for the best set-up and especially on comparing the two types of tyre we have here. From a performance point of view, allowing for all the unknown factors on a Friday, the situation does not seem that different to the one in Australia: our aim is try and make the most of what we have got at our disposal."
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