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May 22nd
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Ferrari promise "aggressive push" for title

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The Ferrari team have said that they will resort to a super-aggressive development programme for the rest of the 2010 season on their F10 car, in an effort to bridge the gap between them and the Red Bull and McLaren teams.

The team had a stronger weekend in Canada, with Fernando Alonso fighting with the McLaren drivers to eventually finish third, ahead of the two Red Bull cars.

But Alonso's season-opening win in Bahrain remains the team's only win in 2010 so far, and recently the team has admitted that development of the F10 was complicated by the amount of time and effort they spent working on their version of McLaren's F-duct device.

Despite their issues, Alonso remains fourth in the drivers championship, just 15 points behind current leader Lewis Hamilton.

And the team have a major upgrade to their car already planned for the next race in Valencia, with team boss Stefano Domenicali promising more developments to come.

"For sure there is a need for a more aggressive push," Domenicali bellowed after the Canadian GP weekend.

"It was clear that we had concentrated too much effort on this blown rear wing - we spent a lot of effort there, being not focused on the other areas of the car.

"From Valencia onwards the focus will be to develop other areas of the car apart from this blown rear wing, because it is a complicated system that took a lot of resources out of our team."

The Valencia update is believed to include their version of Red Bull's low-slung exhaust system, as Ferrari continue to try and copy their way out of the doldrums.

Domenicali also suggested that the team had been competitive already in Canada, with Alonso only being overtaken by eventual winner Lewis Hamilton and second place man Jenson Button after being blocked by other cars.

"We could have done much, much, more in terms of result," Domenicali said of the Montreal race, "The performance that we had was really good, honestly, and the car was exactly the same as it was in Turkey where we were nine tenths behind.

"We need to be prudent before we do something exaggerated on one side or another. For sure the tyres are a key factor – and here we did the right choices in that respect."

He added that: "Going back to the championship, it is very, very open. I did a calculation that if we had won the race we would be leading the championship with Fernando.

"It means that everything is really very, very open and that is the motivation that we should have inside to make sure that we push race-by-race. Canada gave a picture that was totally different from the picture we had two weeks ago."