[3] This was seen by some pundits as a political move by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, who founded the Future Italy think tank.

[5] In response, Ferrari began to refer to the car as the "F150th Italia", claiming the original F150 moniker was simply an abbreviation.

Their lack of pace continued to hinder their results in both Malaysia and China and after three races, they remain without a podium position and sit third in the Constructor's Championship, already 55 points down on leaders Red Bull.

Massa, meanwhile, started from tenth place, after mechanical problems prevented him from setting a time in the third qualifying session.

Although he managed to get as high up as sixth place, two botched pit stops meant he could only finish 11th, behind Kamui Kobayashi and outside the points.

But Ferrari again showed a lack of pace and after two rounds of pit stops Alonso found himself behind Mark Webber, who at the time was third.

When Alonso switched to hard tyres, the situation became even worse and he was soon overtaken by Jenson Button and was eventually even lapped by race winner Sebastian Vettel, thus finishing in fifth.

Alonso would probably have had a great chances to overtake Vettel but Vitaly Petrov and Jaime Alguersuari had an accident which led to the race being suspended.

At the British Grand Prix, the FIA introduced another ban, this time on off-throttle blown diffusers, which had been developed to perfection by the Red Bull and McLaren teams.

With the track almost completely dried, the Ferrari 150º Italia started to show how good race pace it had, of course, with the aid of the ban on off-throttle blown diffusers.

At the Hungarian Grand Prix, Ferrari had a decent pace on super-softs, but Alonso had made a mistake in Q3, which put him in 5th, behind Massa, who qualified 4th.

At the Belgian Grand Prix, mixed conditions in qualifying meant that Massa would start the race from 4th and Alonso from 8th.

After a criticism regarding on the subliminal tobacco advertising from the previous season, the barcode was replaced with the team's logo on the engine cover.