Gasly delivers crushing Alpine warning

Pierre Gasly has conceded Alpine "doesn't look great" with a number of issues to fix ahead of the new F1 season.

After an exodus of the French manufacturer's management - both in the boardroom and the technical department - last season, Bruno Famin has become the Team Principal following a short interim spell in charge.

But after three days of pre-season testing, the Enstone-and-Viry-based outfit failed to impress, with a number of problems stopping any headline lap times being produced as Gasly and Esteban Ocon got to grips with the new machinery.

The stripped-back livery indicates issues with weight saving and despite finishing sixth in last season's Constructors' standings with two podium finishes, Alpine looks set to struggle for points at least in the opening round of the season back at the Bahrain International Circuit.

"I don't think we look great," Gasly told Sky Sports F1 at the pre-season test.

"But at the same time, we still have a couple of days to really understand everything we've done.

"We've put the car upside down, done a lot of tests. So hopefully, some analysis and answers will bring us some more performance. And then, we'll find out, no one will hide any more next Friday.

"But I think we'll have to be patient, even if it's not what we like as drivers, but clearly it might take some time before we really unlock the performance we want from that car."

'We're not going to start from where we would have liked'

"It's not going to be an easy first race," added Gasly, who made the move to Alpine ahead of last season following a spell with AlphaTauri [now RB].

"We're not going to start from where we would have liked. But at the same time, we've got to give ourselves some time to understand that new car concept that we have.

"The good thing is we've identified very clearly what we've got to work on as a team. Now, whether we're able to fix it with car setup or not, for the first few races of the season, time will tell, but for sure there'll be an aggressive plan of upgrades which we will need to close the gap.

"It has been very clear with Esteban, we had very similar feedback straight away. It's all about analysing whether we can fix these issues with set-up ahead of next week, or whether we need bigger upgrades to counter these couple of issues which we can identify already.

"So yeah, a lot of work. Still, it's only three days of testing, it flew by. We'll try to put the car in the best place possible for next week."