Having once again failed to set the field alight during Friday practice, Fernando Alonso labelled the day as just a normal Friday.
Alonso finished eleventh in the first session of free practice in China and tenth in the afternoon's running, nearly two seconds off the pace of top shot Michael Schumacher.
While the Spaniard currently leads the Championship, Ferrari have made no attempt to hide the fact that they still have many problems and they were once again evident in China with both Alonso and team-mate Felipe Massa not mixing it up at the front of the field.
As such, Alonso was not surprised to find himself in the midfield after an uneventful day's running.
"It was a normal Friday, based mainly on evaluating new aerodynamic parts in FP1 and on the usual tyre tests in FP2," he said.
"As always, we tried to work out which would be the fastest compound to use in qualifying and which would be the most consistent over a long run.
"We definitely lack a bit of performance: we will try and find it for tomorrow, as well as trying to sort out the balance of the car, especially in terms of its grip. There's a lot to do if we want to have a good qualifying."
Technical chief Pat Fry echoed Alonso's sentiments, once again underlying the fact that the team are capable of good and bad results but that distinctively average is their liking placing.
"We have brought some updates here for the F2012 which should provide an improvement in terms of performance, compared to the first two races: the first evaluation that we can make after these three hours of free practice is a positive one, but clearly we have hours of work ahead of us this afternoon and tonight to complete an in- depth analysis," he explained.
"On the other hand, we cannot ignore the fact that the characteristics of this track seem to be less suited to our car than Malaysia. Taking these two factors into consideration, I am not expecting anything new in terms of our positions on the grid: at the moment, our realistic expectation is somewhere between seventh and twelfth place, as indeed we were in Sepang. However, we have to bear in mind that it's all very close, so it only takes the slightest thing - a mistake, a less than perfect lap - to make for a significant change of position, either upward or downward," he added.
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