Fernando Alonso pays tribute to Sebastian Vettel and urges Ferrari to raise their game

Fernando Alonso has conceded that Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull's recent form has made it imperative that Ferrari "raise our game" to close the gap in the title race.

Alonso admitted the fact most teams in general were continuing to struggle to get the best out of Pirelli's tyres every weekend wasn't helping the situation to find some more consistency, but made clear that Ferrari had to start mastering the situation in both qualifying and the races. "This year we are a little bit dominated by the tyres' performance, or the tyre issues, that we face every weekend. Some weekends some teams are hit, and some weekends the others, but it seems that if you have the weekend that you make the tyre work and last properly throughout the race you have a better chance to win. "[Irrespective of] the performance of the car in the high-speed corners or the low-speed corners, I think it will be weekends in the next couple of races to make the tyres work in maximum performance in qualifying and in the race. "Sometimes you hit one of the two and it's not enough so we need to improve in that aspect. The team performance needs to be a little bit better in the tyre preparation, Saturday and Sunday."