Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso has admitted that the Ferrari team have been "surprised" by their lack of competitiveness in recent races, after the Turkish GP was dominated by the Red Bull Racing and McLaren teams.
Alonso, who won the opening race of the season in Bahrain, suffered another disappointing weekend in Turkey, qualifying down in 12th place in his Ferrari, and recovering to only 8th place by the end of the race.
And he mused after the race that, pace-wise, he felt the team was down at the level of 2010 surprise package Renault and didn't have the car to fight at the front.
"We have been a bit surprised, as both in Barcelona and here we were not too competitive," he muttered to Spanish television.
"All race Felipe fought with Rosberg and I fought with Petrov, so we are at Renault's level, which is obviously not enough.
"We have an improvement for Canada and then for Valencia we have a bigger package. But we know McLaren and Red Bull are very far away, and we don't know if that's enough, so we have to work very hard."
He insisted that he was still in the 2010 championship fight, despite falling 14 points behind Mark Webber in the standings after Turkey.
"The points are good. Logically we wanted more but we were third in the championship, now we are fourth so we are still there," he shrugged, "We don't have the fastest car, and yet we are one point ahead of Vettel, so we aren't doing too bad."
Off the back of another poor weekend, the Italian team are planning a major upgrade for the F10 car in Valencia, with team principal Stefano Domenicali admitting that the team's 2010 development push has not been good so far.
He pointed out that the time and effort spent on developing a version of McLaren's F-duct system had caused them problems.
"It is for sure true that we have invested a lot in the new system with the wing, but it is not enough and it is not perfect yet," Domenicali whined in Istanbul.
"What should happen in the next month is that in Valencia we should have a big update where there will be a lot of new parts on the car.
"But it is true from the fact point of view that the bits we tried to put in place were not enough to cope with the pace of the development that the biggest teams have done."
He added that: "We need to find something more - because we don't want to give up after six or seven grands prix.
"Two thirds of the championship is still open. We have seen that everything can happen and we have seen how different situations can emerge in the races.
"So I think that we need to take this bad weekend for us in a productive way – reaction and not depression. Depression is for the people who do not want to achieve the targets that we set at the beginning. This is for sure that atmosphere that we have to live with in Maranello."
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