James Allison: 'Special' to win in red

Ferrari's chief architect James Allison admitted feeling overwhelmed after Sebastian Vettel's brilliant win in Malaysia.

The British designer knows all about the Scuderia's heritage, having spent five years in Maranello in the early 2000s, but Sunday's victory still brought forth an emotional feeling of accomplishment.

"It's good to win in anything but there is something absolutely fantastic about this team," Allison said. "At Ferrari, they work especially hard but they also have the history and tradition of the team bearing down on our shoulders. Everywhere you go in the factory, there is the past evidence of their massive success and anyone who works there when it is not successful is cowed by that.

"But there is also the weight of expectation of an entire nation. Those things are pressures that we soak up and when the pressure is released by a day like this, boy, does that feel good. I just wanted to dance around and scream and shout and hug all my friends and colleagues who have gone through this journey together."

Allison's SF-15T chassis is a massive step forward compared to last year's car for which the 47-year-old provided only partial input, but the Scuderia's technical director says it's still early days before the team can consistently give Mercedes a run for their money.

"We're fortunate the car goes quite well on its tyres on a hot and rough track, but I'm fairly sure that we will have our work cut out in China to do anything like as impressive a job as we have done here.

"There's a lot of work for us to do before we can come to a race weekend confident that we can hunt for victory from the first session of the weekend. But we do have an exciting development program and we've got a lot of performance to bring."

Click here for Sunday's gallery from the Malaysian Grand Prix