Alonso sees Alpine improving: "Closer to Mercedes and Red Bull"

Behind them, McLaren and especially Ferrari have also made a big step forward this season, while Aston Martin and Alpine haven't seemingly improved. Yet Alpine driver Fernando Alonso says to Motorsport.com that this is not quite right.

"Looking and analysing all the figures in a way, we have narrowed the gap with Mercedes and with some of the opposition. So even though we are P5 in the constructors' championship, we have reduced the gap with the leaders and that's how tight everything has become. From ninth to the top, everyone is closer."

Expectations Alpine

Because with every season comes a certain level of expectation. Alonso had expected Ferrari to make strides, but McLaren, according to Alonso, is developing surprisingly quickly.

"I think the expectations or our ambitions at the beginning of the year was to repeat what Renault were able to do last year Bearing in mind that Ferrari had a very strange 2020 season with quite low performance, we expected that Ferrari might be ahead of us. But it's also true that we lost a bit too much ground with McLaren."

It seems too difficult for Alpine to take third place away from Ferrari or McLaren during the second half of the season. A fifth place seems to be the highest Alpine can achieve. But then the team of Esteban Ocon and Alonso will have to deal with AlphaTauri and Aston Martin.