Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has warned not to expect his team to be competitive at every race for the rest of the season.

Following Sebastian Vettel's victory in Malaysia, Ferrari had been unable to challenge Mercedes on the majority of circuits until a second win at the last race in Hungary. The victory helped Arrivabene reach his target of two wins for the team this season, but he warns further strong weekends after the break will be interspersed with less competitive races.

"Of course Mercedes are strong everywhere, but ... we are expecting to have good races and bad races over the course of this season," Arrivabene said. "That doesn’t mean we are stepping back, because you have to consider that sometimes the others are going up. So you have to catch again and then we need to do our job.

"So in general, I have to say, the direction we took is good and we have nine races to go. During these nine race, you will hopefully see races like [Hungary] and others like Silverstone or Spain. Sometimes, when you are talking in a very straightforward and honest way, they say that it can’t be true. But for people who know Formula One, they know it is more or less like this."

Arrivabene's comments echo those made by technical director James Allison, who says Ferrari is not yet good enough to challenge for a championship this season.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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