Arrivabene says that, with the goal of matching Williams and Red Bull now achieved, Ferrari has to set its targets on Mercedes.

“As I said before our goal was we were looking forward to Williams and Red Bull at the beginning, now we need to start to be a bit more convinced about ourselves and reduce the gap to the Mercedes guys,” said Arrivabene.

“It’s just a question to continue like this with the right methodology, working and respecting the programme without panicking, keeping up the spirit of the team.

“You know for example today we were working without the engineer in charge of strategy. Yesterday we had a problem in qualifying, because it’s like when you are sailing very, very fast in a fog!

“All the engineers they were reading th data, but not having the guy who’s an expert we were struggling a bit, and in fact we fucked up, as simple as it is! It could happen. Today we were quite convinced that we were quite strong.”

As for his own reaction to the race, he said: “About the team I was happy. As a tifoso I was happy too, but as a team principal I’m half happy, because I mean one car was stopped on the track and the other car was on the podium, so for me we have done half of the job.”