Alpine are bringing along planned updates to their car for this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The team are aiming to bounce back from a poor Monaco race, with Esteban Ocon scoring two points with a ninth place finish and Fernando Alonso finishing outside the points in 13th. "We have a small upgrade package, as per our development plan, so it’s been a busy week at the factory to have everything ready," said Alpine Executive Director Marcin Budkowski. "All the while, we’ve conducted rigorous analysis and simulations to make sure we go to Baku with the best possible understanding of what our issues were in Monaco to ensure they don’t affect us again." Alpine have struggled to unlock performance from the A521, which is the competitive Renault R.S.20 from last season tweaked to suit this season's regulations. The team have gone from podium finishes to barely scoring points over the winter, and Budkowski admitted that Alpine simply have to do better. "After two promising races in Portugal and Spain, Monaco has put a brief halt in our progression," he said. "It was generally a poor showing, and there’s no hiding from that as a team. While we managed to score points, we’re not satisfied with our relative performance compared to our main competitors. "Some of the teams we’ve been fighting closely with recently were clearly more competitive than us and took a big reward for that. We’ll take forward our learnings, some of which will naturally be related to Baku, another street circuit with the same compound of tyres as Monaco. "We’ve used the days in between to regroup at Enstone and Viry, to learn and move forward."
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