The Enstone outfit have had the fourth fastest car for much of the season, and in the constructors’ championship they are currently 18 points clear of McLaren in the fight for best of the rest behind Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes. .
Although the team failed to score points in Italy last weekend, while Lando Norris gave McLaren a seventh place finish, at Alpine they believe that their disappointing weekend was simply due to the Monza circuit not being suited to the characteristics of the A522 .
Team sporting director Alan Permane insists the Monza performance was just an exception and that, for the next race in Singapore, the slow-speed nature of the Marina Bay track, coupled with the team’s latest development , it will leave a very different image.
“It’s an outlier for sure, 100%,” Permane said of the team’s performance at the Italian GP.
“We’ll be running a new floor for Singapore, which is a huge step forward in downforce. We’ll be back where we need to be, and we’re really looking forward to getting there and especially Suzuka with this car. It’s going to be fun.”
Alpine admitted it hadn’t expected to have such a troublesome weekend in Italy, having been so competitive at the low-downforce Spa-Francorchamps circuit last month.
However, Permane said there were some key answers they needed to figure out, such as why the team’s pace dropped after what looked to be a fairly competitive Friday.
“We didn’t expect to be in trouble,” he admitted. “I thought it would go well for us.”
“We ran absolutely well on Friday and that’s the tricky part, that’s what we don’t understand. In the long run without DRS, using all the downforce, we seemed to be going well. We were quicker than McLaren and quicker than everyone who was racing U.S”.
“Sure we weren’t as quick as the first three cars, but it didn’t seem like there was any major drama. We had quite a bit of drag, but we thought it was the fastest way to go for that track and that’s how we ran.”
“But I think in the end we suffered from a lack of pace. We struggled in qualifying. Both drivers said they made mistakes, which is unusual, so clearly the car was difficult to drive.”
“In the race we didn’t have the pace, and of course we didn’t have the pace we had on Friday afternoon when Fernando ran on the medium tyre, and he said it was fantastic.
“He was fast, I think he was running 26.5 with full tanks, and we couldn’t get close to that on Sunday. So we have to work to try and understand what was going on.”
