"While we cannot say everything is already set in stone, it's true to say that the development phase is already quite advanced," he said. "It's a very tight deadline, but we have got an intensive development programme in place and we hope to have a power train that delivers good performance with reliability right from the start of the 2014 season."
Getting enough time on track to test the new engines could prove to be the most crucial - and most problematic - part of the whole process.
"At the moment, no ruling has been put in place which would allow us to test the new type of engines outside the usual testing limitations," he explained. "And of course, with the rule change, this new engine will be expected to complete almost double the mileage of the current ones and getting it to run reliably will be a very big task.
"However, I would estimate that, by the second half of this season, every team will have an engine that, while not being the finished article will be the engine that will be used in 2014 and the top teams will have an engine that is 90% the same as the one that will be raced next year," he said.
Many of the teams are already getting a head start with the development of new 'extreme' exhaust systems. Once such evaluation session this week during the Barcelona test led to problems for Fernando Alonso's run on Wednesday.
"We tested the exhaust right to the very end of its life, as we need to know where are the limits and this failure can therefore be seen as part of our routine work at the track," Marmorini explained.
He went on to point out that perhaps the biggest single task ahead of all the teams adapting to the 2014 engine regulations will be the return of turbochargers.
"It's definitely interesting from a technical point of view but there is still a lot of development work to be carried out," he said. "Not just at
Ferrari but for all the teams, who will have to use the same turbo, which is of a completely different type to the one we saw back in the Eighties."