Alonso aiming for a winning streak

Fernando Alonso appeared in bullish mood on the first day of the German Grand Prix weekend, saying that he is now "very, very confident in the car" and predicting that it is now capable of taking him and the team on a winning streak, which may or may not give them a chance in the championship.

“We have, I think, 32 points more than last year from these same nine races, so we are definitely improving our results, always trying to do our best," said Alonso. "But we have to accept that Red Bull was very, very dominant in the first half. There is nothing we can do about that now except work hard and keep enjoying every Sunday. Then, at the end we will see where we are.

"We face difficulties in terms of the championship this year because of the points lost earlier, but we will not give up,” he said. “We will try and win races and wait for some mistakes from Red Bull and when we reach the key point of the championship, we will see if we are still too far behind. We are having a good championship now and we will try to keep doing the same. .”

Alonso said that the conveyor belt of development parts is now starting to bear fruit, taking the pace of the car closer to Red Bull in a qualifying condition - at Silverstone it was just 1/10th of a second. But the car was also faster on race day.

It appears that the unique conditions of Silverstone, where off throttle diffuser blowing was cut to 10%, may have helped Ferrari more than its rivals, taking a few tenths of a second less performance away from them, but it's hard to quantify because the development parts, such as the new rear wing also improved its performance in high and low speed corners. The Ferrari was the faster car on race day. We will see if that pattern is repeated this weekend.

Looking back to the early part of the season, before Pat Fry took over as technical director, Alonso said, "We had brought a lot of new parts, some of which worked and others that did not.

"Then in the last four or five races, every new part we brought has worked fine, which is definitely good news, not just for this year but for future development for next year. I am very, very confident in the car, the engine and all our designers are very motivated now, knowing that everything they did, working day and night is producing good results on Sunday.”

Former technical director Aldo Costa left Ferrari recently, having been replaced by Fry in May.

Fry says that the choice of tyres for this weekend, soft and medium, should suit Ferrari and believes that the team is on the right track for a run of results in the second half of the season,

"What that win does is show that we have understood our problems and that we are working in the right direction," said Fry. "We will continue to develop the car as quickly as we can, and each step we make improves our understanding, which is important as it also impacts on work for next year's car.

"We have a few more updates for the Nürburgring, and then one further update for Hungary the following week. We are keeping the pressure on to develop as much as we can before the summer break."