Ferrari CEO Louis Camilleri hopes "flexibility" in the F1 rules helps the famous Maranello team pull itself out of its "hole".
The partisan Italian press is now blasting Ferrari after each race, with Corriere dello Sport predicting that it will take "a long time" for the situation to change.
"While the other teams develop, Ferrari sinks further and further into an unprecedented crisis," added Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Ferrari chairman John Elkann admits that Ferrari's "enormous history" in F1, which was marked at Mugello with the team's 1000th race, "also creates pressure".
He told Sky Italia: "There are many reasons why we are in this situation, but at Ferrari we do not like excuses.
"It will take time. We have a difficult season ahead of us, this year and next year, and in 2022 we will have the opportunity to restart on a new basis."
Indeed, the corona crisis means teams are limited in the car changes they can implement between 2020 and 2021.
"There is nothing worse than giving false hopes," Elkann added, "but we must progress for 2021. But to progress means to be on the podium, not to win."
Camilleri agrees that Ferrari's return to competitiveness will "take time".
"I'm hoping with a bit more flexibility in the regulations next year we can at least step it up from where we are," he said.
"We're in a hole now, and we know we're in a hole. Realistically it is going to be tough."
Carlos Sainz is moving from McLaren to Ferrari for 2021, and he is already asking for "patience and trust" from his own fans.
"I think we have to wait," he told El Mundo Deportivo newspaper. "F1 may change next year with a couple of regulations to slow down the cars and take away downforce.
"It is a very young project, Mattia already said that last year, and now we have to wait and see if things improve a bit. They will surely improve," Sainz added.
"I think it is a difficult challenge but one that I want to do - to get to Ferrari, to do everything I can to improve the car, to guide in the direction that I think is the right one and prepare well for the regulation change in 2022 which for me will be the key for the next years.
"But changing a car to suddenly win races is going to be difficult," he acknowledged.
"So I think that next year is going to be a difficult year but a year that if Ferrari hits the key of the problems and spends the 'tokens' in the correct areas, suddenly the year can be much better than this one."
