'Amateurish' Alpine under attack: That is not acceptable

Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi has delivered a damning assessment of the team's start to the season.

The French manufacturer has scored only eight points across the opening four races having slumped behind Aston Martin and McLaren.

Issues with the car have been punctuated by underwhelming performances in Bahrain and Azerbaijan, both races that were blighted by a plethora of mistakes.

Speaking to Canal+ before Pierre Gasly clinched fifth in Miami Grand Prix qualifying, Rossi said: “It's disappointing, it's actually bad. This year ended up starting with a flawed performance and flawed delivery.

"It's obvious our position in the standings is not worthy of the resources we spend, and we are quite far – in fact very far – from this year's end goal.

“I'm noting not only an obvious lack of performance and rigour in the delivery but also potentially a state of mind that is not up to this team's past standards.”

Not acceptable

In the Bahrain season-opener, Esteban Ocon earned three separate penalties during a race to forget, whilst Gasly was out of position following a disastrous qualifying.

The former AlphaTauri and Red Bull driver then endured a nightmarish outing in Baku with a fire in practice followed by a crash in qualifying, whilst Ocon was forced to start from the pits in both races following changes made in parc fermé.

“I did not like the first grand prix, because there was a lot of – I'm sorry for saying this – amateurishness, which led to a result that wasn't right. It was mediocre, bad," fumed Rossi.

“And the last race in Baku was tremendously similar to the one in Bahrain. That is not acceptable.

“You're allowed to make mistakes – it's a basic principle, you learn from your mistakes. But you do [need to] learn, and when you make the same mistakes twice, it means you haven't learnt and you're not taking responsibility.

“That is not acceptable.”