Alpine has lost too much ground to McLaren in Formula 1

Alpine, then known as Renault, and McLaren were embroiled in a tense three-way battle for third place in the 2020 constructors’ championship, which also included Racing Point, now Aston Martin.

While McLaren continued its upward trend in 2021 and now has to fight for third place with a resurgent Ferrari, both Alpine and Aston Martin are stagnating.

After Esteban Ocon’s shock victory in Hungary, Alpine jumped from seventh to fifth place in the overall standings, leaving both Aston Martin and AlphaTauri behind.

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Ocon’s triumph marked the Enstone team’s first win since the 2013 Australian Grand Prix, where it raced as Lotus Renault, but in 2021 there was generally a bit of a lack of speed and consistency compared to last year.

Alonso stated Alpine had calculated Ferrari would come back strong after a shaky 2020 but acknowledged that his team is further from McLaren than hoped.

“I think the expectations or our ambitions at the beginning of the year were to repeat what Renault was able to achieve last year,” he told selected media outlets, including Autosport.

Fernando Alonso, Alpine F1

Photo by: FIA Pool

“Given that Ferrari had a very strange 2020 season with quite a poor performance, we expected Ferrari to be ahead of us, but it’s also true that we lost a little too much ground with McLaren.”

“That Renault fought with McLaren until the last race last year and we can’t do that this year.”

A silver lining for Alpine is that it has narrowed the gap to front runners Mercedes and Red Bull and that the new regulations of 2022 offer an opportunity to take a big step forward when Alpine launches its first brand new power unit since 2019.

“By looking at and analyzing all the numbers, we have narrowed the gap to Mercedes and some of our competitors,” added Alonso.

“Even though we are P7 in the constructors’ championship, we narrowed the gap to the leaders and so everything became tight. From ninth place to the very top, everyone is closer. “

“Same with Aston Martin, Racing Point battled for podiums last year and even won a Grand Prix and this year we’re closer to them.

“So yeah, it was a bit up and down for all the teams, including us.”