Stefano Domenicali says Ferrari can take great encouragement from its performance in the Bahrain Grand Prix, even though he admitted that sixth place was the 'minimum' that the constructors' champion squad should be achieving.
After its awful, point-less, start to the season, Ferrari finally scored with Kimi Raikkonen, although his team-mate Felipe Massa was only 13th after breaking his wing in a brush between the teams' two cars at the first corner.
"It's the minimum that we should have done today," said Domenicali.
"Unfortunately we should have done it with two cars.
"It's a pity when you start the race and you see our two cars touch at the first corner - you say 'mamma mia, it's really difficult now'.
"But in terms of performance, what we have seen is that during the race the pace was not too bad.
"Felipe came in with the problem with the wings, had to put a lot of fuel on and was in a lot of traffic, but when it was clear he was pretty fast."
He said the result was the boost that Ferrari needed to kickstart its recovery.
"It's a breath of air that we needed at this moment with the pressure that we had, but we need to keep our feet on the ground," said Domenicali.
The Italian is confident that his drivers will raise their game further once the Ferrari allows them to fight at the front again.
"We need to give our drivers much better performing cars," he said.
"If we give them the cars, and they have to be reliable, then we have all the elements to come back."
Massa agreed that Ferrari had made an important step in Bahrain.
"It was a racing incident," he said.
"When I was alone, my pace was really, really strong compared to the guys at the front.
"Unfortunately the biggest problem was at the first corner, but the car was quite competitive.
"I'm sure we would have been able to fight for points with both cars, so it's quite encouraging."
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