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Alpine’s worst form of the Formula 1 season has come at a terrible time in its bid to beat AlphaTauri and achieve the minimum target the team set for 2021.
Esteban Ocon’s shock victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix and Fernando Alonso’s fourth place in the same race account for more than one third of Alpine’s 106-point tally from 2021 so far.
Though the team has scored points in all but two grands prix it has often been fighting for the lower places in the top 10 with an undeveloped 2020 engine and minimally upgraded car, having set its sights on 2022’s new technical rules and a heavily revised power unit.
Even with those tricky circumstances, Alpine has been edging closer to achieving its modest aim of finishing fifth in the championship. But Alpine has now scored only three points in the last three races, 19 fewer than its chief rival AlphaTauri – who drew level in the fight for fifth thanks to Pierre Gasly’s fourth place in last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix.
That was another difficult weekend for Alpine in which poor qualifying performance seriously hurt its prospects.
In fact, Alpine’s one-lap pace has been worse in the last two events than at any time this season – 2.655% slower than the fastest car at the United States Grand Prix, and 2.967% off in Mexico.
What’s weird isn’t that the team that barely has the sixth fastest car in F1 is struggling to finish fifth, though. It’s that this two-race slump followed two of Alpine’s best weekends of the season: Alonso was sixth on the grid in Russia and fifth in Turkey.
“This is that inconsistency that we need to obviously figure out,” said Ocon. “We’ve had very good moments and very good qualifyings, and very bad ones at times for me or Fernando.”
Alonso’s verdict was more blunt after being knocked out in Q1 in Mexico. Asked if he was surprised by the team’s lack of performance he replied: “No. It was a surprise to be competitive in Sochi and Turkey.”
This is a flippant stance because Alpine didn’t go into the Mexican GP weekend expecting to be so far off the pace. It’s just how the weekend played out.
“We like a certain type of corner, so we know Mexico was not the ideal layout for our car,” Alonso admitted.
“The season is still going on and the development of the car has still been frozen for a very long time. We’re struggling a little bit more.
“We need to hold on, we need to keep working hard and in the remaining four races try to score more points than AlphaTauri.”
But that’s not happened for a few races now and worryingly for Alpine is the fact that in Mexico, like in the US, the one-lap pace was missing.
Alonso should have made it through to Q2 but his first lap was spoiled by a red flag and the second was inexplicably already six tenths down by Turn 7 (which is where Alonso’s first lap got curtailed).
But Alpine was stronger in race trim, hence Alonso’s relatively untroubled run to ninth – he has 10 points finishes in the last 10 ‘normal’ grands prix he’s finished, excluding Belgium’s farcical ‘race’ and Turkey where he was hit into a spin by Gasly on the opening lap.
These two factors – Alonso’s random loss of pace on his second flying lap and Alpine’s general trend of better race pace – hint at where part of its weakness lies.
“It’s another little point that makes me think we’re not quite operating the tyres in the right window, for the single lap,” said Alpine sporting director Alan Permane.
“But once you put multiple laps on them, things calm down a little bit.
“You quite often see that with a car, you put some fuel in it and things are a bit calmer, less sharp and less critical.”
This trait has made the Alpine a better race car than qualifying car in several grands prix and helped both Alpine drivers pick up small points even on difficult weekends.
Unfortunately for Alpine it’s no longer enough to just keep its points tally ticking over. AlphaTauri’s caught up and has a faster car. So now it’s a straight fight, one that on pure performance Alpine is poised to lose unless it makes a sudden breakthrough.
“Maybe we have not got the level of competitiveness or we don’t have the speed of the AlphaTauri car but we were able to execute better races with no mistakes, no stupid mistakes, scoring with both cars,” said Alonso.
“There are some strengths for each of the teams and we need to play with our strengths.”
The problem is that these may no longer be enough to cover its weaknesses.
Especially as its position has also been weakened by the mini-revival from AlphaTauri rookie Yuki Tsunoda, who ended a run of five races outside the points in the United States and looked very quick in Mexico but had a grid penalty then was an unfortunate first-lap victim in the race.
“Up until Austin they only had one driver,” said Permane. “But it does look like the other guy is getting his act together, and they’ve got two drivers.
“It’s a worry, a real worry. We’ll just keep fighting and doing what we can.”
