Although the Norfolk-based team have been pleased to have again closed up on the back of the midfield teams over the winter, they felt they had yet to fully get the most out of the CT01 at either of the opening two rounds, with tyre performance pinpointed as a key area for improvement.

But with the three-week gap between rounds two and three allowing the team's engineers to focus on improving the situation for the Shanghai/Bahrain double-header, Caterham's Technical Director Mark Smith is confident progress has been made.

"As we head to Shanghai for the third race of 2012 we know that we still have some margin to work on to extract the best from the car and the tyres in both qualifying and the race itself," he said.

"We have been looking at this in detail since returning from Malaysia and have a number of plans in place to help us move forwards as soon as we get on track in Shanghai."

Team Principal Tony Fernandes says the CT01's performance in the opening two races was in line with expectations and now, in addition to the work on tyres, the team had to focus on continuing to improve the car's aerodynamics in order to bridge the remaining gap to the midfield as quickly as possible.

"Before the Australian and Malaysian races we had a pretty clear idea of where we would be relative to the other teams around us, and the performances we saw confirmed what we need to do to keep bridging the gap to the cars ahead," the Malaysian said.

"Over the race weekends we need to look at improving our qualifying pace, and it looks like we can work more efficiently on maximising tyre performance levels over the whole weekend.

"Back at the factory the main focus for us is on improving the aero performance of the cars. This is what will give us the chance to fight for the point we want to win, and the fact we can now head into the next two flyaway races with the sort of upgrades we could only dream of last year is a very encouraging sign, and one that shows how hard the whole team is working to help us achieve our goals."