Montezemolo demands Ferrari improvement

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has demanded that Ferrari turn around their current form and quickly.

The Formula One season may well only be three races old, but the pressure was beginning to show on the Ferrari team after the very first race.

Following their pre-season winter testing campaign, Ferrari headed to Australia firmly believing that they would be on a par with Red Bull, competing for the win in Melbourne.

On our VitalF1.com front page poll, Fernando Alonso was our own joint favourite for the win, but in reality, the Spaniard was only good enough for fourth, while team-mate Felipe Massa only took seventh spot after both Saubers had been disqualified from seventh and eighth places for a technical infringement to do with the rear wing actuators.

Two weeks later in Malaysia and once again Ferrari were well off the pace in comparison to both Red Bull and McLaren, while for the second race in succession a Renault driver took a podium place ahead of Ferrari.

Massa took fifth, with Alonso in sixth.

Ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix, team principal Stefano Domenicali, technical director Aldo Costa and assistant Pat Fry all changed their travel arrangements, returning back to Italy rather than flying straight to Shanghai.

Ferrari had hoped to find a way of improving the car ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix, which would appeased an already impatient Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo.

However they remained in a similar position, with Massa once again beating two-time F1 World champion Alonso, with Massa sixth and Alonso seventh.

“This cannot and must not be the team’s level,” Montezemolo told Ferrari's official website following the weekends race.

“It’s a very delicate moment. I expect our engineers to act with determination and know-how, unleashing the maximum of their capacity to improve the performance of the car in a short time. I want Ferrari to be at the level that both we and our fans demand it should be.”

Ferrari's poor start has left them 55 points adrift of leaders Red Bull in the Formula One constructors’ championship standings.