Sebastian Vettel led the early stages of the race in Montreal but Ferrari's decision to run a two-stop strategy left the door open for Lewis Hamilton to take his second consecutive victory.

Although Arrivabene has welcomed the progress the team has made – especially in better getting pace out of its tyres in qualifying – he knows that the team must continue working hard to deliver that elusive first victory of the season.

"We must always be humble, because we have to be conscious of where we are,” he explained. “But the team has reacted well to understanding many things.

“We have understood clearly how to find the right balance of the car and how to work with the tyres. This weekend we still had a gap to Mercedes, it is not big but it is not enough. We need to work more to be able to win.”

Tyre development

Ferrari was boosted over the Montreal weekend with a strong performance in qualifying, that came after much work was done to better understand the tyres.

But with the outfit wanting to deliver a repeat performance at a hot track to be confident it has sorted out its single-lap issues, Arrivabene is well aware that it is not resting on its laurels yet.

"We will see in Baku. What is clear, we have to continue in this way,” he said. “The work done in the preparation of the machine is good, and we must continue to move forward in this direction.

“Each track has its own characteristics, but the lesson learned after Monaco is that we need to focus on each individual race. For the rest the baseline is good: and the engine here gave us the answers we were looking for.”

He added: “The work we did after Monaco has paid off. We understand better certain aspects of the car, and the confirmation of that work came over the whole weekend.

“It was an interesting race, as was qualifying. But we must continue on this path and be positive. We smelled victory, and immediately after the race I was a little disappointed. But with a cool head, I can only be happy with what has been done."

When asked if he felt Ferrari's turbo upgrade for Canada had put Ferrari on the same level as Mercedes in the horsepower stakes, he said: “I do not think you can say you are at the same level as Mercedes. You have to win.

“And when you are winning, then you can say you are at the same level and the others then have to match you.”