Sebastian Vettel thinks it was wrong to expect one engine upgrade would lead to Ferrari wiping out Mercedes' advantage, but he insists progress is being made at Maranello.
Ferrari spent three engine upgrade tokens in the build up to Canada but was unable to come close to matching Mercedes in the race. Team boss Maurizio Arrivabene insisted circumstances in Montreal - such as the problematic Saturday which saw Vettel start 18th - masked the positive engine gains made by Ferrari.
Asked if he could have challenged Mercedes outright without any issues, Vettel said: "In the end we didn't, so we will never find out. Everything worked as expected. You cannot expect miracles."
The four-time world champion pointed to the huge advantage Mercedes came into the season with and said that gap does not just disappear overnight.
"Look at the gap in pre-season testing, it was huge, then since then I think we were able to close some races more, some races less. It is not easy - they are not idiots, they are trying to make as much progress as possible, so if you close the gap then you have to make more progress, which is not easy. I think we are on the right track and things are going in the right way, so we are obviously pushing very hard."
Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen agreed with Vettel's assessment and thinks the Canada circuit could have given a misleading impression.
"We were hoping for a better result and better speed against them but I think this circuit is really going to show you the difference if you're lacking on something," the Finn said. "I'm sure the upgrade we did was good and it works as we expected, obviously we still have to work hard and improve things overall. I'm sure on a more normal circuits we should be stronger and we know where the difference was but we were hoping a bit more close fire and a better result."