Ferrari boss pinpoints the Maranello team’s two main targets for China. Ferrari boss pinpoints the Maranello team's two main targets for China.

Scuderia Ferrari have had a tough start to the new F1 season with Sebastian Vettel yet to finish on the podium with Charles Leclerc denied a maiden win after his engine short-circuited in Bahrain. With the Italian side already behind in the standings, the 1000th Grand Prix will be just as if not more important for them when it comes around.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes Ferrari’s “sheer power” advantage makes them favourites to win the Chinese Grand Prix. Speaking to Crash.net, he said:

“I would say if they [Ferrari] are able to maintain those power levels on a power sensitive circuit like Shanghai, they are the favourites clearly, because the lap time benefit might even be more than in Bahrain. It’s not drag – it’s never one silver bullet or one simple action but the drag levels we have calculated would have been a tenth maybe in difference. It’s sheer power,” he added. “We have seen different power levels in the race [in Bahrain] and also between the cars. So that needs to be digested now. We expected them to be strong in Melbourne after what we’ve seen in terms of pace in Barcelona testing, so Melbourne was more the surprise than actually Bahrain. Bahrain was very strong, straight-line performance is unbelievable. The power they have displayed is unmatched by anybody. There was, I think in qualifying five tenths on the straights only. That is really difficult to compete with. So we have to get used to this level of performance in my opinion and see Melbourne as the outlier.”

However, Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto is more cautious after the unfortunate outcome from Bahrain and pinpoints the Maranello team’s two main targets for China: “For our part, we want to verify that the SF90 is also competitive on this type of track and ensure that the reliability problems we had in Bahrain are not repeated.” – Mattia Binotto explained, as the Swiss-Italian engineer also talks about the Shanghai International Circuit’s characteristics: “This track is different in character to those in Melbourne and Bahrain. Here, we have a very long straight and corners that put an uncommon amount of load on the front end. As usual, we want to do well and take on our competitors. It will be race number 1000 in the history of Formula 1, which is a further reason to try and excel.” – he added.