SEPANG, Malaysia, March 20, 2008 (AFP) - Ferrari´s Formula One team arrived in Malaysia in upbeat mood Thursday, determined to put last week´s woes in Australia well behind them.

The Italians suffered their worst season-opening performance in 16 years last Sunday in Melbourne, with two engine failures as the cars of defending world champion Kimi Raikonnen and Felipe Massa succumbed in an incident-packed weekend.

The team flew the cars back to Italy to be examined by technical experts at Maranello -- and they discovered that the main cause of Ferrari´s problems was not erratic driving, but fuel-feed problems caused by the high temperatures, which touched 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit).

"It was all caused by a fuel-feed problem partly related to the hot temperatures in Melbourne. It provoked a failure of the intake valve on both engines," a team spokesman said Thursday.

The lack of time has prevented Ferrari from a massive car overhaul but they said they planned to work on improving the mapping of their engines for this weekend´s Malaysian Grand Prix, likely to be run in torrid heat, at Sepang.

Raikkonen, fresh from spending a reported one million dollars on a holiday home in Thailand´s Phuket, said he was not over-concerned by the problems that left him with just one point after a dismal weekend.

"Any lack of reliability is a real problem for me, but I know that back in Maranello the team is working hard to solve our problems. I´m not worried at all about the performance and the competitiveness of the car. The first race was like it was -- but we know that we have a really good car.

"We have to be constantly competitive during the weekend, because when you have to start from far behind, you get stuck in the traffic, just the way it happened at Melbourne. We had a good start, but it is difficult to overtake."

His partner Massa said he is equally confident that Ferrari have nothing to fear about the high temperatures in Sepang.

"We need to start a new championship from Malaysia," he said. "The championship is long, we know points are very important but we know also that many things can happen in every race.

"I am sure the team will have found out about the problems and we will have reliable cars this time."