Alpine suffered a minor setback in a close duel with McLaren. Both racing teams started the Le Castellet weekend with the same number of points, but Alpine, despite previous euphoria, had to realize that McLaren had gained more than Alpine with its upgrade.
Although Fernando Alonso was able to get a reasonably good starting position with seventh place, Lando Norris was two places better – and above all half a second faster than the Spaniard. That’s a disappointment after two fifth places in a row.
“We came here with great expectations after being so competitive at Silverstone and Austria. We thought we could be at the top of the midfield, but AlphaTauri and McLaren seem to have improved significantly with their upgrades,” says Alonso. “And we have problems.”
Norris was “out of reach” for Alpine today, which Alonso notes is “a bit worrying” – although he stresses he’s not disappointed with the performance in general at the moment. Nevertheless, the Alpine home game has not gone as desired so far.
“Sometimes the car works well on Friday and we hardly have to change anything in the set-up. But we were not satisfied here in the first and second practice sessions, and the third practice session was still difficult with the understeering,” said Alonso.
Ocon with “terrible qualifying”
Teammate Esteban Ocon, who was only 17th in Saturday’s practice session, felt the effects of this. “We’re fifth in Austria and last here in practice. That’s impossible,” wonders the Frenchman, who complains about a “very inconsistent” car and describes his Q2 failure in twelfth place as a “terrible qualifying”.
“It’s not where we should be. The car has the potential to be sixth or seventh,” says Ocon. “I had a lot of understeer and couldn’t get the rear under control. The set-ups are actually very similar, so the car shouldn’t behave like that.”
For Ocon it was the fifth qualifying session in the past six races that he lost to teammate Alonso. The Alpine driver feels a little reminded of last year, when he was also far off pace at times until the team noticed damage to the car and replaced the chassis.
“But we can’t afford something like that again if we want to fight for fourth place in the championship,” he says.
Hope for long run pace
At least for Sunday nothing seems to be lost. After the punitive transfers of Carlos Sainz and Kevin Magnussen, Ocon starts from the top 10. “That’s a good thing. And hopefully we can still gain a few positions,” he says. “But we will have quite a performance deficit.”
Starting from seventh on the grid, teammate Alonso is building on a good long run that the team had on Friday. “Therefore there is hope that we can have a good race,” said the Spaniard. “But it will be a challenge for everyone. The tires will suffer a lot in the long corners and in the high temperatures.”