Alonso refuses to give up hope

SILVERSTONE, United Kingdom, July 7, 2011 (AFP) - Fernando Alonso has stressed that his Ferrari team must show a big improvement at this weekend's British Grand Prix if they are to have any chance of fighting for the world championship.

Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull has stormed to a 77-point lead in the title ace after winning six of the opening eight races. However, the 29-year-old Spaniard believes there is still time to turn things round.

"I think we need to wait and see if either McLaren or Ferrari has a big improvement in the car and we are able to fight with Red Bull," said Alonso. "Their car so far has been too dominant. It is difficult to compete like
this, and difficult to think about beating Vettel without a big improvement in our car or in McLaren's car.

"So hopefully here in Silverstone we can see a turnaround of this situation in terms of performance, and then we see. There is always the hope, there is always the motivation to win every race but we obviously need a step forward."

Alonso added that while it is important that his team improve the performance of his car, it is equally important for defending champion Vettel to start making mistakes.

He said: "It is true that we need to improve our performance and be much more competitive than we are now. But at the same point we need some mistakes from Sebastian to recover the gap, he needs to make some mistakes if we want to have some hope, and we saw already now in China and Canada that these
mistakes may happen.

"So we need to concentrate on our races, try to win every weekend we go to, even if we know it is difficult, but we need some help for sure."