Fernando Alonso: “It’s difficult to compete like this…”

Fernando Alonso says Ferrari has to work harder to find more speed and get itself into a competitive position.

Although there have been flashes of performance in the past few races, the team has yet to win a race this year.

“We were not quick enough in Australia, then we faced some difficult races in Malaysia and China,” said the former champ at Silverstone. “Then we recovered a little bit in the last three, but obviously the gap in points with the leader is quite big, a hundred points or 99 or whatever. Obviously after eight races it’s not the best position or the position we wanted, but it’s the way it is. We need to work harder, we need to keep improving the car, because at the moment we’re not quick enough.”

Alonso admits that it’s not going to be easy for anyone to beat Vettel and Red Bull this year.

“I think we need to wait and see if either McLaren or Ferrari has a big improvement in the cars, and we are able to fight with Red Bull. I think their car in this part of the championship is too dominant. I think [after] eight races, we should take about eight wins for Sebastian with no mistakes – the mistake in Canada and China, [the team was] a little bit conservative. It’s a dominant position that maybe we don’t remember from maybe 2004, Michael’s time.

“It’s difficult to compete like this and it’s difficult to think about how to beat Vettel without a big improvement in our car or in McLaren’s car for Jenson and Lewis. Hopefully here in Silverstone we can see a turnaround of this situation in terms of performance, and we see. I think there is always the hope, there is always the motivation to win every race, but obviously we need a step forward.”

Alonso says he doesn’t know how the exhaust gases rule clarification will affect the pecking order: “We’ve done simulations of course, on some loss of downforce on braking. It will cost us some lap time, as everybody will suffer. We have no idea of which team will be more affected or less. We need to wait and see for Saturday probably, because tomorrow it will be difficult to have any conclusion. But on Saturday and Sunday hopefully we will see something more.”