McLaren and Alpine head into today’s race at Paul Ricard level on points for fourth in the constructors’ championship, with McLaren leading thanks to their Imola podium.
Alpine was hoping to continue its good form in France after recent gains in the standings, only to struggle in practice on Friday and Saturday afternoon.
As Alonso reached Q3, qualifying seventh, his teammate Esteban Ocon dropped to 12th and lamented his session as “terrible”.
Norris was able to take fifth place for McLaren, separating the two Mercedes cars and taking a 0.52 second lead over Alonso.
“Honestly, we came here with high expectations after Silverstone and Austria where we were very competitive,” Alonso said after qualifying.
“We thought here we could be in front of midfield, but AlphaTauri and McLaren seem to be improving the car a lot with updates. We struggled.
“To be honest, when I saw the lap times with Lando half a second ahead, it’s a bit too much and unreachable for us, which is a bit worrying.
“But let’s see tomorrow what the race pace is, and the tire management and the strategy and everything. Hopefully we can challenge it tomorrow.
Fernando Alonso, Alpine A522
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi said after Friday’s race that the team was “a bit disappointed” with the difficulty of the car, noting the understeer both drivers were battling against.
Alonso admitted it had “not been an easy weekend” for Alpine and the team were still unhappy in FP1 and FP2 with the way the car was handling.
“Then in qualifying the wind shifted 90 degrees, so there was a crosswind on the straight and a headwind on the main straight, so he changed a few more corners,” Alonso explained. .
“It hasn’t been an easy weekend. 7th is a solid position and yesterday the long runs felt pretty solid to us, so there’s hope we can have a good race.
High temperatures are expected to make the race a challenge for tire management, with teams also having to take into account the slow pit lane at Paul Ricard, which makes minimizing the number of stops more important than usual .
“The tires struggle a lot in those long corners with the temperature as well as the heat and the grain,” Alonso said. “It’s going to be a challenge.
“The pit lane is the longest in the championship, I think 27 seconds or something, so a stop will be ideal if you can avoid the second loss of 27 seconds.
“I don’t know if it will be possible or not. I think we will be very flexible on the strategy.
