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Fernando Alonso is optimistic that Ferrari can become competitive again despite disappointing results at the Turkish Grand Prix.

Alonso, who started 12th on the grid, finished the race eighth while team-mate Felipe Massa was seventh.

"We remain calm and optimistic," said the Spaniard, who dropped from third to fourth in the championship.

"We have a new package for Canada to help improve the aerodynamics and we have another upgrade for Valencia."

The Canadian Grand Prix is the next race on the calendar on 13 June followed by the European Grand Prix in Valencia on 27 June.

Alonso, who claimed that he drove his Ferrari to its limit in qualifying, is hoping the team can make the necessary tweaks to the car to make it as competitive as it was during the start of the season.

He added: "We lacked aerodynamic efficiency in Turkey but improvements for the car are coming.

"We prepared hard for the first race of the season, arriving in Bahrain with maximum updates and we won that race. We have more updates coming now and hopefully that will pay off."

Turkey GP 'boring' for Ferrari

But BBC F1 commentator Jonathan Legard says the improvements may not be enough help the Italian team re-establish itself as one of the front runners.

"It seems Ferrari have a major upgrade for the European GP at the end of June - a copy of Red Bull's downforce-producing exhaust system, and a new diffuser," said Legard.

"But the fear is that it will not leapfrog Ferrari back up the grid because their rivals will have at least kept pace. The team are also puzzled as to why the car is competitive on softer tyres but well off the pace on the harder compound."

Meanwhile, Alonso said the race in Turkey was dull for both drivers.

"I did manage to recover some positions to finish eighth," he said.

"It was a boring race for both of us because we were stuck in traffic.

"We were fighting the Renaults. Felipe was battling with (Robert) Kubica and I was with (Vitaly) Petrov. We don't want to be battling with Renault for eighth, we want to be competing with Red Bull and McLaren.

"Ferrari underperformed both here in Turkey and in Barcelona, so we need to understand why."

Team-mate Massa agreed with Alonso's sentiments about the race.

"It was difficult to try to overtake today," added the Brazilian.

"The race was boring from beginning to end because we were fighting with cars which had similar pace. We need to concentrate on getting better grid positions."

The omens for the Sunday's spectacle were not good after the cars performed poorly during Saturday's qualifying, with Alonso failing to make it to the final part of the session.

The two-time world champion was not helped by a wobble when he touched the painted white line under braking coming into Turn 12.

The incident, which occurred in the closing stages of the second part of qualifying, came on his first flying lap on his final set of tyres - when the rubber is at its fastest.

Alonso lost vital time and gave up on the lap and he could not set a quick-enough time on his final circuit to go through.

Afterwards, the Spaniard refused to accept that he had made an error, saying: "In that lap I was worse than in the previous lap so it didn't cost me any time or Q3 opportunity.
    
"We were not quick enough, I didn't consider [that I made] any mistake."

And team principal Stefano Domenicali said he was disappointed with Ferrari's display.

"For sure the performance in qualifying was not up to our standard," he said.

"We don't know why and we need to understand. For sure we were expecting much more performance."

Ferrari have failed to win since Bahrain, with the team only claiming two podium places in the subsequent six races - Felipe Massa in Australia and Alonso in Spain.

The Italian team, who celebrated their 800th F1 world championship race in Istanbul, have dropped from second to third in the constructors' standings after McLaren gained maximum points from Turkey.