Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne has boldly declared the team will be a "true competitor" to Mercedes in 2016, rather than the "catch-up artist" it has been this season.

Ferrari has claimed two victories through Sebastian Vettel this season and the German finished second behind Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton in front of the tifosi at the Italian Grand Prix. However, the margin of Hamilton's 25-second victory and the race pace displayed by the world champion highlighted the big gap still to be overturned by Ferrari if it wants to genuinely challenge for the title next year.

But Marchionne insists next season will be a completely different story.

"For '16, all bets are off," Marchionne said. "I think we're entering that season with a completely re-designed engine and a new car and I feel relatively comfortable Ferrari will be back as a true competitor rather than a catch-up artist, which it has had to do in 2015."

Marchionne pointed at the ongoing development work for 2015 and 2016 and how Ferrari has changed its end-of-season approach to previous campaigns.

"'16 is a different ball of wax, it's a completely different environment. We have been working on the '16 power unit for a while now. The difference between this year and the other seasons is that we have never abandoned '15, '15 has remained front and centre in our development work and that's why we're here today on the front row. In past seasons we would have given up after the initial bruises and started working on next year. We've been doing both concurrently, at some cost, but I think we have maintained our emphasis on '15 and '16."

The Ferrari chairman, who replaced long-time president Luca di Montezemolo last year, praised the work of the team's main departments.

"I'm delighted with the work [team boss] Maurizio [Arrivabene] has done. I think him, [technical chief] James Allison, the guys that have worked on the engine, [Lorenzo] Sassi, there's a bunch of people that have really worked their tail off in the past 12 months to really remedy what I consider to be some severe technical shortfalls in the way the car was getting ready for 2015.

"Those issues are mainly behind us. I think we're dragging along today some technical limitations about power development out of the current power unit because there are issues that cannot be fixed in the time we had. That problem is probably behind us now in terms of '16."