Ferrari technical director James Allison has suggested that talk of the Italian team winning the world title this season is "not realistic".

The Scuderia picked up their first win in almost two years thanks to Sebastian Vettel performance in Malaysia, prompting speculation of a challenge for the championship.

However, Allison claims that Ferrari's pre-season target of two race victories remains unchanged.

"I think that we're up against a car, in Mercedes, and others too, that are strong competition," Allison told reporters. "But Mercedes in particular, they have a bit more horsepower than us and a bit more downforce than us and until we've closed those two gaps it's not realistic to talk about title challenges.

"Our objectives were set out at the beginning of the year, we thought it was realistic to score a couple of wins and of course we'll take whatever comes our way and we'll do our best to make our car close up as much as we can.

"Who knows what after that during the course of the year, but I think that sticking with the objectives we stated at the beginning of this year is still realistic."

Vettel also finished third at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix last month.