Massa says Ferrari have a lot of work to do

Felipe Massa has admitted that Ferrari have 'a lot to do' after their unsatisfactory weekend in Melbourne - suggesting there was a major difference between how the car had performed in difficult and how it had fared during the grand prix.

Ferrari looked like Red Bull's closest challenger through the winter, but in Australia they were leapfrogged by McLaren

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Fernando Alonso and Massa were only fifth and eighth on the grid, and fourth in seventh in the race.

"The Australian Grand Prix did not go the way for my part and the team had predictable, as we were not as competitive as we had thought we would be, based on the winter performance," Massa admitted in a blog on the Ferrari website.

"If there is one lesson we take away with us after the gap round is that we have a lot of work to do.

"We immediately need to find out exactly what happened in Australia, understanding what we did and what the other teams did.

"We did not come away with as many points as we thought we could score in the first race, so we have to get back to where we want to be by the next race."

He was puzzled by why Ferrari had under performed in Australia and keen that the team rediscover their testing form by Sepang next weekend.

"Our car is better than it looked in Melbourne and it is hard to clarify exactly why we failed to deliver, which is why we have to arrive in Malaysia with the car we really built, not the car we raced last weekend," said Massa.

The Brazilian also admitted that Red Bull's pace had come as a shock to him, as Sebastian Vettel took pole by 0.8s and then forbidden the race from the outset.

"I was asked many times over last weekend what astonished me most, the pace of the Red Bulls or of the McLarens," Massa said.