Despite the Spaniard masking the car's deficiencies with a shock victory in Malaysia, Fry is refusing to be lulled into thinking that the team's problems are a thing of the past and believes Ferrari may be almost a second off the pace in normal conditions.

"I certainly wasn't expecting to have one driver leading the championship," Fry told the team's official website.

"From quite early on in testing, we realised we had quite a few issues we needed to sort out.

"Everyone at the factory has been working hard at that, as we still have a long way to go. I think our dry qualifying performance is still around 8 tenths off the best while we want to be the best ourselves.

"Damp, low-grip conditions suit our car and flatter some of the issues we have with the F2012 at the moment. You could see that in Melbourne on Friday and again in the race in Malaysia.

"Our position is down to a combination of circumstances, especially the fact that Fernando had two very good races."

Pressure

Those outstanding performances by Alonso have heaped pressure on Felipe Massa, who finished 15th in Sepang - and over a minute and a half behind the Spaniard.

"The car is quite difficult to drive and Fernando has managed to get the most out of it, while with Felipe, we have struggled to find the right balance to keep him happy," added Fry.

"In addition, in Malaysia, we had Felipe on intermediates after the red flag but we had a lot of understeer and so we took the gamble of an additional pit stop which did not work out.

"The fact the tyres were only graining and not worn out was about the only call we got wrong from the pit wall at the last race. It was a set-back for Felipe, one of a few unfortunate circumstances for him."

Development

Back at Maranello, the Ferrari factory is working flat out to find a solution to the F2012's lack of pace and Fry is hopeful some of the upgrades will bring an upturn in performance.

"We are constantly working on improving the issues we have," then Englishman said.

"New parts are coming through and we are trying to get them to the race track as quickly as possible - We will have five updates for China, some are quite visible others less so.

"Then there will be a bigger upgrade package for Spain. It would be nice to have them earlier, but we have already brought forward some parts we were developing for Spain and we should have them in China."