Lando Norris has pop at Alpine with ‘pretty bad job’ quip at Italian GP | F1 | Sports

And the 23-year-old is hoping they can close the gap after bringing upgrades to their car after the summer break.

“When you see the margins of qualifying from them to us sometimes, their pace in the race compared to us sometimes, it’s never that much the opposite way round,” he said.

“They have a better car, they’ve just done a worse job throughout the season and made more mistakes, things like that – had more problems with the car, whatever.

“Fernando in Australia was on for what, P2 or P3 in qualifying? And we were miles away. So they’ve had a better car, pretty much all season. We’ve done a better job with the car that we’ve had this year.

“Now they’re just ironing out a few more of their problems and issues and maybe also improved the car a bit more than we have and taken a few more steps.”