Despite wining the last four races in a row, Ferrari does not consider itself to be the front-runner and is now feeling the heat from its Formula 1 rivals.
Felipe Massa won his second race of the season in Istanbul on Sunday but Ferrari failed to pick up its third one-two of the year because McLaren-Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton, the winner of the season opener in Australia, put himself between Massa and world champion Kimi Raikkonen.
''We are not the strongest. Our rivals are out there and will be right to the end,'' observed Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali.
Aside from McLaren, the only other car to win a race this season, Domenicali said that BMW was proving to be a formidable rival, as demonstrated by their second place in the constructors championship behind Ferrari.
''On Sunday they looked like they were playing it safe, not aiming for a win, but just the same they picked up nine points,'' Domenicali observed.
Looking at his own team, Jean Todt's successor said he was ''very happy because we're on track to making up the points we lost in Australia. Now we've got Monaco and Canada coming up, two difficult races for us, considering how we've done in the past''.
In Australia Ferrari picked up only one point, with Raikkonen, while Massa failed to finish the season opener, as well as the next race in Malaysia, due to mechancial problems.
In order to prepare for the next two races, Domenicali said Ferrari had carried out ''simulations using different approaches compared to those we used before. Let's hope this will pay off on the track. But it's going to be tough''.
''This week we'll try to verify on the track what we did in the simulation for Monaco and then hope this will help us avoid our poor result there last year,'' the Ferrari chief said.
In the 2007 Monaco Grand Prix Massa was a distant third, 69 seconds behind Hamilton who came in second behind then McLaren teammate Fernando Alonso.
Raikonen was only 8th and suffered the humiliation of being lapped.
In Monaco Domenicali said he again expected BMW and McLaren to be Ferrari's chief rivals, ''but I also expect that Renault will be out to finally show itself''.
Raikkonen continues to lead the drivers' standings with 35 points while Sunday's victory allowed Massa to leapfrog from fourth into second place, level with Hamilton at 28 points.
The Monaco Grand Prix on May 25.
