Ferrari said Monday they had to have a good hard think after being outgunned by McLaren's Lewis Hamilton in the German Grand Prix.
''We have to sit down and try and work it out. For the first time this season we didn't get the speed we thought we could,'' team chief Stefano Domenicali said Monday.
World champ Kimi Raikkonen looked a bit off the pace again and some observers think his up-and-down form could be a symptom of a comedown after the title high.
Press pundits say the Italian team might have to start focusing on Felipe Massa in the same way McLaren are putting more of their energies behind Hamilton.
Domenicali fuelled speculation by saying Raikkonen's attitude to qualifying might need geeing up.
''Kimi has a different approach to qualifying, he likes to take things more gradually. His group will have to improve that aspect. If you start further back everything gets harder''.
The Finn was sixth on the grid at Hockenheim and slipped back to seventh before the entry of the safety car pushed him even further back, to 11th.
Only a late charge took him back to sixth.
Massa, by contrast, kept as close as he could to a rampant Hamilton, clinging on to second for much of the race even with an underperforming car.
But the shake-up caused by the safety car allowed Renault's Nelson Piquet to slip by him and he didn't have enough juice to come back.
The result put Hamilton four points clear of Massa and seven points ahead of Raikkonen, breaking the three-way tie in which they went into the race.
Only time will tell whether the pundits are right and Ferrari should reverse last year's team order, putting Massa first.
One thing is sure, the team is in for a roasting from president Luca de Montezemolo, who growled after mix-ups at the last race, the British GP, ''No more fooling around''.
The team goes into four days of tests at Jerez de la Frontera starting Tuesday hoping to sort things out before the Hungarian Grand Prix on August 3.
''We have to get our thinking caps on,'' Domenicali said, warning against ''hasty and superficial analyses''.
