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.

Click here to find out the budgets available to each F1 team during the 2015 season

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.

Recent Posts

Monaco GP: Friday's action in pictures

It was an eventful Friday in the Principality, with several session disruptions but at the…

3 hours ago

McLaren facing pace and reliability woes after difficult Monaco start

McLaren arrived in Monaco expecting to be firmly in the mix. Instead, the opening day…

4 hours ago

Russell: Ferrari hype justified – ‘clearly the team to beat’

George Russell says that Ferrari’s strong pace on Friday’s opening day of running at the…

5 hours ago

Briatore lifts lid on failed Mercedes talks over Alpine F1 stake

Alpine F1 boss Flavio Briatore has delivered a blunt assessment of why Mercedes boss Toto…

6 hours ago

Monaco GP: Hamilton and Leclerc keep Ferrari on top in FP2

Ferrari further tightened its hold on the Monaco Grand Prix weekend by locking out the…

6 hours ago

Monaco Grand Prix Free Practice 2 - Results

Full results from Free Practice 2 for the Monaco Grand Prix in Monte Carlo, round…

6 hours ago