Alonso: Alpine best midfield team in F1 despite having slower car

At the Italian Grand Prix, Alonso scored points for the eighth time in nine races, while teammate Esteban Ocon has finished in the top 10 in the last five.

Alpine’s strong run, including its surprise victory at the Hungaroring, has propelled it into fifth in the constructors’ championship.

Alonso thinks AlphaTauri and Aston Martin have often had faster cars than Alpine but simply haven’t maximised their advantage.

“So that's something that is our strength as a team, you know, to score points every Sunday,” Alonso said after the race at Monza. “We don't have probably the fastest car on the midfield, but we seem to have, you know, probably the best team on the midfield, so that allowed us to score points every Sunday.

“I think we are good. We're good on every front. We are delivering the job, as I said, on Sundays. We don't have maybe the car to compete in pure performance with AlphaTauri or with Aston Martin, but we have the team to compete [with] them on Sundays and to score points. So we will try to fight for this fifth place in the constructor championship until the end, if possible. So in that respect, I think we are okay on the race team.”

With F1’s budget cap slowly coming into play, Alonso was keen to stress the importance of not crashing to avoid giving his team even more work and expense as the focus switches to the 2022.

“And on the factory we are preparing the best we can the 2022 project, as I said, you know, budget cap and all of the implications that we have in Formula 1 in our days now, and we try to do the job on Sundays as well,” he added. “You know, no crashes, no incidents, no extra money for the team. So far we've been very good on race weekends and full focus and full money for 2022.”