Scuderia Ferrari
Fernando Alonso says it is 'sad' to see Ferrari slip back after he qualified in seventh place for the Singapore Grand Prix.
Alonso has not won since May's Spanish Grand Prix but the Ferrari F138 had demonstrated improvements at low downforce circuits at Spa and Monza, where Alonso finished as runner-up to Sebastian Vettel in both events.
But while Alonso said that Ferrari was still pushing in its championship bid, he expressed his disappointment at the regression.
"I think we need to be realistic and not be happy at all with the performance we did here," he said following qualifying.
"We did the maximum bringing new parts to this race, they work in a way, but maybe not enough. We tried many things, we made many changes last night and today and the car was a little easier to drive."
"I think everyone is pushing in the same direction, and the gap is very big," he said, referring to the one second deficit between himself and Vettel. "So that is sad."
Alonso added that on high downforce circuits, Ferrari appeared to have stagnated.
"On a high-downforce circuit we were fourth fastest in Hungary. We come here and we are maybe fourth fastest in terms of the teams, and it's sad news for us obviously but there is nothing we can do now apart from preparing a perfect race tomorrow."
The Spaniard, who is Vettel's nearest challenger in the championship, is not expecting a magic fix to Ferrari's issues.
"We will see if we can improve in the next few races, but I doubt it because before July we were around 0.8 seconds slower than our competitors and here we are 1.1s. It's not like in Korea and Japan we will be in pole position by magic."
