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Gerhard Berger has singled out Ferrari's management structure as a reason for their struggles.
The Italian team failed to win a race all season for only the second time in over twenty years, but Berger feels the Scuderia's problems are rooted in their off-track structure.
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"You only have to look at the management structure," the former Ferrari driver told Speed Week in Abu Dhabi.
"At Mercedes you have Toto Wolff, Niki Lauda, (Paddy) Lowe, (Andy) Cowell, (Aldo) Costa. Red Bull has (Christian) Horner, (Helmut) Marko, (Adrian) Newey and Didi Mateschitz in the background.
"Only those two teams have such personalities. In comparison, Ferrari is not at this level," Berger added.
However, Berger insisted that the team's struggles don't highlight a mistake on Sebastian Vettel's part after he chose to leave the successful Red Bull Racing at the end of 2014.
"When Sebastian went to Ferrari, he probably knew that he would have to build a team around him," he said.
"In Michael Schumacher's time at Ferrari, he had a brilliant team around him, as Mercedes or Red Bull do now. You need top-class people all pulling together without fighting, and Seb has not succeeded in creating this yet," Berger added.
Vettel ended the 2016 season with a podium finish in Abu Dhabi, and he insists that Ferrari has been working hard behind the scenes to improve.
"A lot has changed for the better in recent months at Ferrari," the German told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
"Although I am not the team leader, I am fully convinced that the people with the highest responsibilities, who have been criticised very sharply - like our team boss Maurizio Arrivabene - do their jobs very well.
"However, I do admit that this positive internal process is difficult to see from the outside," Vettel added.
Vettel also denied that he has been in a bad mood, showing that he is not enjoying the process of building up Ferrari, insisting he has simply changed his approach to racing.
"I used to feel that I have to always behave well," Vettel explained. "But now I want to be authentic and show the way that I am."
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