Ferrari technical director James Allison has admitted that the team will have their "work cut out" to challenge Mercedes again in this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix.

The Italian outfit pulled off a shock victory in Malaysia last time out as Sebastian Vettel outshone the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, raising hopes that the expected domination of Mercedes may not come to fruition.

The cooler conditions of Shanghai are likely to favour the reigning constructors' champions, however, and Allison admitted that Ferrari have a "lot of work" to do before they can pose a sustained challenge to Mercedes.

"Our car has a pretty decent cooling package. That allowed us to operate in the fierce temperatures like we experienced in Malaysia without having to open up the car. The track was also rough and hot, which is hard for tyres, and we're fortunate the car goes well on its tyres," Allison told reporters.

"Quite what problems were going on in Merc-land I don't know. But I'm fairly sure we will have our work cut out in China to do as impressive a job as we did in Malaysia. I don't know about [a sustained challenge]. I'll tell you at the end of the season. In Melbourne Mercedes were very, very dominant, and we were better than we looked. Even in free air we wouldn't have held a candle to them there.

"There is a lot of work for us to do before we can head into every race weekend confident we can hunt for the victory from the first session of that weekend. But we do have a fairly exciting development plan, and we've a lot of performance to bring. It should at least be an interesting season to see if we can close that gap so we are genuine contenders at any weekend."

Mercedes are 24 points ahead of Ferrari in the constructors' championship after two races.