Alonso's Ferrari frustrations grow

Reports suggest that Fernando Alonso is becoming more and more disillusioned by Ferrari's failure to compete at the front of the field

After a fast start to the season in which Alonso won the season-opening Bahrain GP, Ferrari have tailed off of late, with the team forced to settle for eight and ninth spot in Turkey, a race that was supposed to be a celebration of their 800th race in the sport.

Reports now suggest that Alonso is becoming highly frustrated with the teams' lack of progress.

"I'm told that Fernando Alonso is very frustrated by Ferrari's rate of development. Compared to his time at McLaren in 2007, when the British team had updates for every race, Ferrari's flow of new parts this season has been very slow, with no more than little tweaks here and there so far," explained BBC commentator Jonathan Legard.

"The result is that the car that started the season right on Red Bull's heels is now, in Alonso's words, 'the fifth quickest'.

"It seems Ferrari have a major upgrade for the European GP at the end of June - a copy of Red Bull's downforce-producing exhaust system, and a new diffuser. But the fear is that it will not leapfrog Ferrari back up the grid because their rivals will have at least kept pace. The team are also puzzled as to why the car is competitive on softer tyres but well off the pace on the harder compound," he added.

Legard's remarks have been solidified by Alonso's admission that even with their planned upgrades, the Italian team will not be at the front of the field.

"We know that McLaren and Red Bull are very far away and we don't know if that's enough. We have to work hard," said Alonso.

"We don't know how long it is going to take, but the truth is that we are almost eight tenths from Red Bull and 6 or 7 tenths from McLaren, and these developments [for Valencia] are not going to give us that much."

Having earlier in the week said that Ferrari could not cope with the developments of the 'bigger teams', team boss Stefano Domenicali remains confident that there is still time for Ferrari to mount a title challenge.

"We are not going to stop developing this car - we are not throwing away these races so far," he said.

"We will continue working on the F10 until the end of the season. The championship is still open and we have seen that anything can happen in the races. We will not give up," he added.

Source: Planet-F1