Ferrari headed into the first race weekend buoyed up by their performance in last week's official pre-season testing, where they emerged as the fastest team in Bahrain.
They weren't able to reproduce that sort of form on Thursday, with Carlos Sainz ending the day fourth fastest with a best time of 1:30.769s and his team mate Charles Leclerc ninth with a quickest lap of 1:31.113s.
Both their top times were set in the evening session, having used only medium tyres in the daytime FP1 in order to conserve the softs for more representative later outings.
But the team was still feeling upbeat about its prospects in Saturday's Grand Prix, although like everyone else in the paddock they felt that Red Bull would emerge with the upper hand.
"It was a trickier practice day compared to testing with lower temps and higher winds, which made it more difficult to be consistent on track," noted Sainz after the end of the day's track activity.
"We obviously don’t know the run plan of the others, but in terms of competitiveness it looks like we’re more or less where we expected to be," he added.
"We have had a good Thursday, completing all our programme and tyre testing. Now it’s time to analyse the data and get ready for tomorrow’s quali. I look forward to it, it looks like it’s going to be tight!"
For his part, Leclerc said there was "not much to say" about today's practice. "It’s very difficult to read our competitiveness for now but there were no big surprises," he explained. "No bad surprises, no good surprises either.
"I did a small mistake on my fast lap, and it’s a one-lap tyre, so then that was it. But apart from that it’s all about tomorrow now, trying to focus on making a step forward.
“I feel quite good with the car,” he said. "It’s a much better start compared to last year, where we arrived at the first race and it was very difficult to know what exactly was the right window where we could optimise our car.
“Today it’s not the case: we know we’re in the right window for performing at our best with this specific car.
Leclerc - who won here two years ago - said he thought Ferrari would be in the running again this weekend, but admitted that he had been caught out by how fast Mercedes had been out on track today.
"It was good to be back in the car alongside all the other drivers to kick off the season. Now we have quite a lot of work to do, especially in terms of balance to see where we stand tomorrow.
“I expect to be there with the others; the only question mark is obviously Red Bull, how far ahead they are in front. But with the others, I would be surprised if we are not in the mix.
“Mercedes look strong, which is a bit of a surprise,” the Monegasque said. “But we don’t know which fuel they were running. I think we’ll have all our answers tomorrow.
“It just shows you can never look into testing, because people tend to not show all their cards," added Sainz. "It’s clear Mercedes are going to be in the fight.
“Red Bull in the long run were a lot quicker than in the short run, so I expect them to be also stronger tomorrow and [Saturday],” he suggested. "It’s all about anticipating the conditions and making the best out of this weekend.”
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