Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto has acknowledged the team could switch focus to 2021 sooner if this year's car proves uncompetitive.

The mood at the Scuderia was downbeat during testing, despite intentionally not setting any chart-topping lap-times and instead completed a more detailed program of analysing their new car.

Some though believe Ferrari is simply holding back and will unleash their performance in Australia but even Sebastian Vettel expects to be behind.

“Probably if you look right now, Mercedes is at the top," the four-time champion said.

“Every time they go out, they are fairly quick with ease, whereas others I think need to stretch a bit more.

“I’m curious to really see where we are in Australia but for sure, it’s not like we leave the very strongest impression right now.

“I’m not worried and if it is [that Ferrari is behind] then it is like this, but we will know in a couple of weeks’ time.”

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The main area of focus has been on Ferrari's straight-line speed, which has been much slower than their customer teams, leading to the idea that the team is simply sandbagging.

However, team boss Mattia Binotto claims the SF1000 is behind almost everywhere.

“The overall performance needs to be improved,” he stated, “power unit, even set-up, so I don’t think there is a single area where we need to focus but all the areas."

Speaking to RaceFans, however, Binotto denied there was an issue translating the performance figures from Maranello to the racetrack.

“We developed the car to our best effort and here is the very first test, so you are trying at first to understand the correlation with certainly from the wind tunnel and simulator,” he said last week. “But I don’t think we’ve got an issue of correlation.

“If we look relative to ourselves, we have improved a lot cornering but we are worse on the straight. I think that’s the balance.

"The others have maybe done a better job. I think again that’s only the picture you may have here in Barcelona and we’ll need at least the first two or three races to have a clearer picture.”

And when that clear pecking order has emerged, only then will Ferrari consider if it is worth continuing development or shifting to the all-new car for next year.

“How much 2020 catch-up will affect 2021, that’s certainly a good point,” Binotto added. “I think it’s a balance that we need, or a compromise we’ll need to find out.

“When we are very early in the season you cannot compromise the entire season. So at the start of the season, we’ll certainly keep pushing on 2020 as much as we can because it’s done for us to understand the car, the weaknesses and hopefully it’s things that we can address as soon as possible.

“If I think after a few races we will understand that the gap is too big maybe it’s a consideration that we can take into account. But it’s an early stage right now, I think it’s just a few days of testing.

"I think there are things that we can address on the car hopefully soon. So at the moment, we should keep our plan or whatever was it for 2020/2021.”