Ferrari: Plenty of opportunity to find performance in 2015

Ferrari have a wide scope in which they can find improvements and move back up the competitive order in 2015, according to technical director James Allison.

Ferrari struggled throughout 2014 - the Italian team's first winless F1 season since 1993 - as they failed to capitalise on sweeping regulation changes. Allison feels, however, that there are still several avenues where the team can make gains ahead of their 2015 campaign.

"The guidelines [for 2015] are pretty simple: last year we were too slow, not competitive enough, so fundamentally [we have to] make a competitive car," Allison told Ferrari's official website.

"And as always, the challenge for a competitive car is lots of downforce, lots of horsepower, good driveability, so we've been working all three of those things. The regulations for 2014 were a big change, and so the regulations for 2015 are still quite young. [There is] still a lot of opportunity for finding performance in the power unit - and equally true on the aerodynamic side."

Allison played down the impact of 2015's amended nose rules, saying he does not expect them to hinder Ferrari: "New regulations have changed the way we have to package the front end of the car to some extent, the way the front wing works and the nose and turning vanes - but it's not really so big a deal for us. It is something we adopted early in the year and just moved on from there.

"This year's car is certainly an awful lot better looking than last year's car: prettier round the front, tighter round the back, and that makes for a nice car."

Ferrari's new team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has gone on record as saying that scoring at least two Grand Prix victories is the minimum target for 2015.