Ferrari's biggest strength in its Fred Vasseur era has been to not overreact and hit the panic button, and it will need to lean on that after such a poor start to the 2025 Formula 1 season.
Expectations were high pre-season given the trajectory of Ferrari's 2024 and the fact it had paired Charles Leclerc with blockbuster new signing Lewis Hamilton.
A mixed pre-season test in Bahrain prompted a little bit of doubt over Ferrari's capacity to hit the ground running, but it seemed calm enough. And that seemed justified when Leclerc topped Friday practice in Australia while Ferrari was still playing around with the balance.
Then the Melbourne weekend fell away dramatically when it counted. The hope and expectation turned into a row-four start for both cars, and a meagre five points from a rain-hit race that Ferrari handled poorly.
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The car seemed unstable and ate through its tyres in the dry and the wet, Ferrari's communication was frayed, and its decision-making under pressure was poor. Hamilton's much anticipated debut was compromised and underwhelming, and even Leclerc had an uncharacteristic spin.
In basic terms, the decline can be traced to qualifying, when its prospects for the race collapsed as the SF-25 ate through its rear tyres and neither driver had enough grip at the end of their laps.
One indication was Ferrari had been too slow to adapt to the changing track conditions on Saturday, when it was extremely hot. Another suggestion is that Ferrari had to raise the car to avoid bottoming out too much and wearing away the plank, costing downforce and causing sliding.
Whatever the cause, overusing the tyres was a critical variable for all teams. Vasseur pointed to how suddenly Red Bull's Max Verstappen went from splitting the two McLarens to being over a second per lap slower in the opening stint of the race, because of tyres overheating.
It pointed to the root of Ferrari's troubles being a lack of grip and the overuse of its tyres in qualifying, then paying the price for that on Sunday when track position was everything. This surely meant using the intermediates too aggressively as well.
Leclerc's glum verdict on Sunday was that Ferrari "were definitely very off in terms of pace" compared to the McLarens and Red Bull's Max Verstappen. But if the car was accidentally set up imperfectly for qualifying, that wasn't something Ferrari could suddenly reverse out of on race day.
What Ferrari was left clinging to afterwards was a strong conviction that qualifying and the race didn't reflect the real pecking order, the potential of its car, or the competency of the team.
Of course, this should be the case, given Ferrari got outqualified by not only its main rivals but also a Racing Bulls and a Williams, and Hamilton was not having any joy getting past those cars in the race, stuck under Alex Albon's rear wing in the wet conditions.
But if we are to believe that Ferrari simply failed to read the conditions properly, or just isn't quite on top of its car's sweet spot yet, or a bit of both, the situation becomes…not good, but less alarming.
Vasseur insisted Leclerc's Friday practice pace and early qualifying performance were "much more representative" of reality and that Q3 and the race were "not the real picture of the season for sure". And Hamilton said: "I do think the actual car has a lot more performance. We just didn't unlock it this weekend."
Their hope is that Ferrari actually putting its best foot forward this weekend in China will help show the situation can be like the end of last year - when different teams won races because different circuits, track conditions and tyre demands swung the balance between them.
Vasseur has pledged Ferrari "will be much better" in China, and that this weekend "will be different". An instant response is a necessity.
And it's one thing for Ferrari to get a better result than in Australia as that's the absolute bare minimum. The question is how much better, because Ferrari is relying on a pretty big and sudden swing against McLaren to get anywhere near the early pacesetter.
Vasseur conceded McLaren looked to be "one step ahead", and Hamilton confessed he didn't know if Ferrari had "anywhere near the pace McLaren had". If not, it will hardly bode much better for its championship prospects than the Melbourne nightmare.
But as has often been the way when his Ferrari has suffered setbacks, Vasseur's message is for the team to focus on doing the best job it can - because that's a prerequisite whether the car is fast enough or not, and in Australia it was not the case.
"This weekend was quite extreme for different reasons," Vasseur said.
"The fact it is not a permanent track, the grip is changing a lot, and these conditions [in the race] - it was one of the most difficult weekends to manage.
"It was not a shock but for sure it was not a good weekend for us.
"But we focus on next week and learn a lot from this weekend, because we made mistakes, we need to improve the communication, understand what Lewis needs from the communication.
"It is only in this situation that we can be in the situation. We will be much better next week."
