Ferrari fighting for second place in F1 standings, says Alonso

Alonso and team-mate Kimi Raikkonen finished a distant sixth and seventh in Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix, while Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg finished one-two for the fourth successive race to leave Ferrari trailing the Silver Arrows by 131 points in the title race.

Alonso admitted the upgrade package Ferrari brought to Spain had not closed the gap and said trying to catch Mercedes was an unrealistic target given Ferrari's current performance deficit.

"We need to do better. Mercedes is out of reach, but we have potential to catch the other teams so second position is our target," Alonso said.

"The race was difficult, the weekend has been difficult in general with a lack of grip and balance in the car; there were new parts on the car so we had a difficult weekend."

"We cannot be happy with finishing so far behind the leaders.

"In a way we've had this situation since the first races, because we finished a minute behind the leaders with some safety cars.

"Here we didn't have safety cars so this minute was [actually] a minute and a half."

Alonso's home race marked the first anniversary of his and Ferrari's last victory in Formula 1 and the Spaniard said he could not see that duck being broken any time soon.

"Unfortunately it's been a lot of time; we haven't been able to fight for wins in the last 12 months and we want to do better," he added.

"It will probably not happen soon as we got lapped here, so when we arrive in Monaco we probably won't be in a position to win.

"We need to concentrate and work on every area of the car and make it stronger."