As Ferrari continues to impress, technical director James Allison explains where the 2015 car is an improvement on the 2014 version.

"In pure lap time terms, the gains are almost equal between chassis and power unit," told reporters at Sepang today. "On the chassis side, the lion's share of the gains are aerodynamic, because that's what has the most authority to put lap time on the car.

"So, on the chassis side it's 80:20 aero versus useful gains made in the cooling efficiency of the car, which then translates into aero by allowing you to have the car tighter at the back."

Looking at today's times on the longer runs, and in Melbourne, some believe Ferrari is close to matching Mercedes race pace. "I don't know," admits the Briton. "We will find out on Sunday but our tyre degradation is good and our pace is reasonably good. But everyone uses the Friday differently, so you never know what the others were doing. But we feel it's been a good day."

Like team boss Maurizio Arrivabene and company president Sergio Marchionne, Allison is refusing to get carried away at a time some, including Mercedes, claims the Italian team has taken a major step forward with its power unit.

"It's a little bit early to be confident of that," he admits. "The way you judge it is blurry. The first time you get to see how much downforce and power you've got is in qualifying as that's when you can be certain the others are on the same fuel as you and trying as hard as you are.

"The way you try to separate the downforce from the power is that the shape of the way the car accelerates is different depending on whether it's a power gain or a downforce gain. It is vulnerable to things like the wind, so it's only after a few races that the real picture emerges.

"From the Melbourne analysis it looks as though we have made a good step forward with the car and the loss relative to Mercedes is split equally between the chassis and the power unit."

In terms of closing the gap to Mercedes, he says: "We will not be conservative, we will be shovelling development onto the car as quick as we can make it and there's a load in the pipeline at the factory at the moment.

"The aero programme is performing strongly," he continues. "These are still quite young aero rules so we can expect more from it and the same with the engine. The situation with the tokens make this year very different to last year and we can bring more during the year. You need to make sure you've got the horsepower to put into the tokens, but three is an important number even if it does not sound like much, as it buys you a combustion upgrade, which is quite significant regarding the top end of the engine."

Check out our Friday gallery, here.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Hondawho?, 29/03/2015 9:48

"Ok, I'll take my last comment back then shall I? LOL!!!!"

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2. Posted by Hondawho?, 28/03/2015 9:17

"Is it me, but Herr Vettel does not look at home and comfortable around Ferrari pit? I am not sure he is happy with his decision so maybe a change to Mercedes for 2016 replacing LewisHam ilton who will not sign a contract as he wants 2 years and Herr Wollfy is only prepared to offer 2015!"

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3. Posted by Yeyox02, 27/03/2015 22:57

"It is good to see that Ferrari is doing its job. Silver and Red podiums."

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4. Posted by TheBucketOfTruth, 27/03/2015 22:37

"Whoops I read that a bit wrong. Is there no way to delete comments on Pitpass?"

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5. Posted by TheBucketOfTruth, 27/03/2015 22:35

"Maurizio sounding nicely in touch with the technical side of things for being a management type. All good signs coming from the red garage these days."

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Allison reveals where Ferrari has improved

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