Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso acknowledges the team needs to improve sharply and quickly on the performance it showed in Sunday's F1 season opener when the scarlet cars were well off the pace of their rivals.
Alonso finished 35 seconds behind race winner Nico Rosberg, and when adjusting for the time behind the safety car and some late coasting by the German, it showed the Ferrari was about a second a lap slower than the Mercedes. "We're not happy with the performance we showed today, we need to improve," Alonso said.
"On the other hand, it's the first race of the world championship and we cannot become crazy about what we saw today; we just know we need to work."
Kimi Raikkonen, who was returning to the team to give Ferrari's its first past world-champion pairing since 1953, was even further off the pace and spent much of the race battling with the Toro Rosso cars. "It's not the first time I have been in this position," Raikkonen said when asked about a slow start to the season. "We will wait and see what it takes to fix this, if it takes a week or a month."
Not happy with Ferrari's performance at Australian Grand Prix, says Fernando Alonso
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