Alpine targets F1's top teams: 'We're not far off'

Alpine Team Principal, Otmar Szafnauer, has said the team will need to "out-develop" Mercedes and Aston Martin if they want to catch up to them.

While Mercedes has struggled to get on top of its difficult car concept, Aston Martin has taken the 'best of the rest' crown in the opening five races after achieving four podiums with Fernando Alonso.

Alpine currently sit 82 points away from Mercedes and 88 points off Aston Martin in the Constructors' Championship, having only amassed 14 points - the same as McLaren.

Much like McLaren, CEO Laurent Rossi admitted that the team missed their targets during the winter break in a recent interview and Szafnauer believes they will need to capitalise more in the next couple of races to close the gap.

"If we can out-develop over this year, which is what we're trying to do, we're not that far off from a Mercedes or an Aston Martin," he told media, including RacingNews365.com.

"But the points difference is big now, we didn't optimise or even capitalise early on with some crashes and an incident in Baku was far from ideal.

"We scored decent points here, but we need to score a little bit more to try to catch up."

Alpine CEO wants to see progress

Rossi recently branded the team "amateurish" after various mishaps, including the hat-trick of penalties of Esteban Ocon at Bahrain and the nightmare weekend for the team in Baku.

He doubled down on those comments by warning that "there will be consequences" if things do not improve for the team, and that he "won't wait until the end of the year" to make changes.