Ferrari is hoping this week's test at Barcelona will shed light on the reasons why its updates for the Spanish Grand Prix did not offer the step forward the team expected.
Ferrari arrived in Spain with heavily revised bodywork (see photo for comparison), which it hoped would help close the gap to Mercedes. However, in Sunday's race the deficit between the lead Mercedes and lead Ferrari was the largest it has been all year while Kimi Raikkonen, in the second Ferrari, failed to beat Valtteri Bottas' Williams.
Such was the uncertainty over the advantages of the new updates in Spain that Raikkonen's car ran without them to allow a comparison with Sebastian Vettel's SF15-T. Team boss Maurizio Arrivabene said the comparison had shown the updates were better than the old spec of car, but that they still fell short of Ferrari's expectations.
"What is in front of everybody is that there is a big gap [to Mercedes]," Arrivabene said. "Now, we need to understand if it is related to this track or it is related to us. This is good to know in the next few days when we do tests on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we can finalise the comparison.
"If something was wrong I'm not criticising anybody, I'm taking my responsibility to talk in the name of the team and if something was wrong we have to step back and with humility say we made a mistake. At the moment the numbers we have in terms of comparison is telling us the solution is good, but the reality is telling us it is not good enough and we have to work."
Ferrari was losing most of its lap time to Mercedes in the tight final sector of the lap, but Arrivabene is wary of drawing sweeping conclusions from the weekend as the track was offering low grip throughout.
"The comparison between the two cars, it's clear that it's there and the car of Sebastian was going very well. We need to improve the car of Kimi and we need to improve the new solution. Barcelona is not an easy track, but to be honest it's not an easy track for all the others too.
"The gap is there and now we need to analyse all the data we collected to understand what is clear - we are not blind - the fact that in the last sector we were losing half a second. I'm not escaping from the reality, it's there. We need to understand and find out how to improve the new package. But it's clear the new package is better than the old one."
Arrivabene said a solution needs to be found ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix in under four weeks.
"If you look at the third sector it is a traction sector, so if we are not able to solve that problem it will not be worse in Monaco where you have a special set-up but in Canada. I don't want to go into Canada with the same problem because it will be a nightmare. Even if we are on the podium, in all honesty I don't care [if the car is not performing]."