Marchionne says Ferrari qualifying slump no huge issue

While Marchionne had said ahead of the weekend that he expected Ferrari to start winning races from this weekend, Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel qualified down in fifth and sixth, over a second behind pole-setter Lewis Hamilton.

But Marchionne reckons Ferrari was just caught out by the track temperatures and insists the team is still in the best form he has seen in years.

"I think the team is in the best shape I have seen for a long, long time so they need to work more diligently on fixing these issues," Marchionne told reporters on Sunday.

"I would not make a huge issue out of the fact that yesterday we had this out of body experience with operating the car in a temperature window that was not there: had we known it, we would have done a variety of things differently.

"We are learning a process, that has never happened to us. We will get better at this."

He added: "Yesterday afternoon, whatever luck we had, it went elsewhere: we didn't have it on track. I just had an interesting conversation about this with Toto: Mercedes had a similar experience in Singapore last year.

"There is an operating window of temperature for the tyres which is the result of increased temp on track and we were not ready.

"It caught us off guard and both drivers felt it and there was not much that can be done."

The Italian admits, however, that today's race is set to be very hard for his drivers.

"It is going to be a very difficult race. Having four drivers of that calibre in front of Ferrari makes it tough."

Despite the lack of victories so far, Marchionne reiterated he has complete faith in team boss Maurizio Arrivabene.

When asked if Arrivabene had his confidence, he said: "Totally. Beyond anything."

Additional reporting by Roberto Chinchero