Ferrari has decided to put back its troubled KERS power-boosting device on Felipe Massa's car for Friday's practice sessions ahead of this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix, sources at the Scuderia said on Thursday.
The Formula One team did not rule out, however, also mounting it on Kimi Raikkonen's car if tests ensure its reliability.
Ferrari took off the KERS on both its cars for the Chinese Grand Prix last weekend after suffering reliability problems with it at the season opener in Melbourne and then again in Malaysia.
KERS is an acronym for 'kinetic energy recovery system' and is a device designed to exploit energy produced from braking.
Ferrari has been plagued by reliability since the start of the season and currently has no points after three races, its worst season start since 1981.
Insiders believe that because of the design of the Sakhir track, with its long straightway and heavy breaking corners, the KERS may make the difference on Sunday.
Engineers at Ferrari's headquarters in Maranello have been working round the clock to iron out the car's reliability and aerodynamic problems, especially after the international racing federation FIA ruled that the disputed rear diffuser was legal.
Observers believe the double-decker diffuser was a key factor in allowing standings leader Jenson Button to win the first two season races and place his BrawnGP team at the top of the constructors championship ranking.
Toyota also uses the innovative diffuser and it placed both cars in the first five in Australia and first four in Malaysia together with the two Brawn GP cars.
Speaking ahead of the race weekend, Massa said that ''a great deal of work at the factory has gone into working on the KERS system since the race in Sepang, so I am hopeful it can help us in this race''.
''With the KERS I expect to be more competitive as it should be a significant advantage at this track. I hope that finally we can make life difficult for the other teams and fight for a very good result,'' he added.
Ferrari has made no secret that it realistically does not expect to see any turnaround in its fortunes until the Formula 1 circus heads to Europe next month.
''We need to be realistic when looking at next weekend's race in Bahrain, where we're going to have the same car as we had in China,'' team principal Stefano Domenicali said earlier this week.
''We knew we would suffer in China and in all probability, we will suffer again here this weekend. However, what is most important point is that the entire team and everyone at Maranello, is working very hard to get out of this situation as soon as possible,'' he added.
''What we really need to to do is work intensely on getting a new aerodynamic component to the track by the time we get to Europe for the (May 10) race in Barcelona,'' Domenicali admitted.
Despite the team's poor start to the season, Domenicali observed that ''theoretically there are still 252 points up for grabs and we will not give up because that is absolutely not part of the Ferrari philosophy''.
''We have fought back from situations like this before, situations which many outside our team saw as impossible. Thus there is no reason for Ferrari to give up on chasing its goal of winning the championships,'' Domenicali said.
