Team principal Ross Brawn feels his Mercedes outfit still have a "while to go" before they can "trouble" Red Bull.
Mercedes were expected to be challenging the frontrunners this year but they made a nightmare start to their 2011 campaign in Australia when both Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg were forced to retire.
Although they improved during Friday practice in Malaysia, they were still off the pace of the likes of Red Bull and McLaren.
"It was a better day than we experienced in Melbourne as we made reasonable progress with the car," Brawn said.
"We had one or two minor issues, but we should be able to resolve them overnight, and the car wasn't too bad.
"For us, I think the season does start here because Australia was frustrating, but only because of problems of our own making as we just had too many issues with too many things.
"You can normally deal with one or two things, but we had a flood of problems and it was difficult to keep the car running consistently and work out what we needed to do.
"That was capped by a couple of issues in the race (both drivers retired), so it wasn't a great weekend for us.
"It's still frustrating because the car is not where we want it to be, but it's still better than it looked in Australia, and let's hope we can demonstrate that.
"However, I think we've a while to go before we can certainly trouble Red Bull.
"Although we've lots happening, there are some things we still need to understand as the warmer weather and different conditions here with the tyres has presented problems we have to get our heads round."
