With Ferrari-McLaren relations at an all time low, paddock gossip is inevitably doing the rounds that Ferrari is now unhappier than ever about tackling this season and beyond with the new McLaren-developed control electronics. Following the investigation back at Maranello this week into Ferrari's two failed race engines in Australia, speculation suggests that the Italian team has found that the design of the team's V8 power plant itself was not responsible for the problems.

It is similarly being reported that Ferrari thinks the fuel pressure problem that stranded Kimi Raikkonen down the Melbourne grid last Saturday is also related to the McLaren ECU.

"This kind of thing can happen when you are working with one procedure that you do not know so well. Now we know that there is a conflict we can make sure it does not happen again," a team spokesman told GP Week.

Team boss Stefano Domenicali, meanwhile, also suggested that Ferrari's Albert Park dramas could be related to the new ECU, which is developed jointly by Woking based McLaren Electronic Systems and Microsoft, and awarded the tender to equip all F1 cars until 2010 by the FIA.

Domenicali said of the system: "We must still discover it in full." (GMM)