It has been a season to forget for Alpine. After decent last year, when the team from Enstone managed to even score two Grand Prix podiums (Ocon’s third place in Monaco and Gasly’s third place in Zandvoort) and one Sprint race third place for Gasly in Belgium.

However, this year has been full of struggles and far from podium finishes with both drivers driving beyond their limits just to score one or two points. 

Alpine now sits in ninth place in the Constructor’s Championship with only 13 points, losing 3 points to eight William. For comparison, last year after the Singapore Grand Prix, they already had 75 points secured and overall finished the season in sixth place, which now seems pretty much impossible.

The most points they scored in one race this year is three, which was in Canada and Spain when both drivers finished just behind each other in P9 and P10, with Pierre Gasly being the better one.

Now, Gasly remains Alpine’s only points scorer since the summer break with his P9 at the Dutch GP and since then it has been even worse than at the beginning of the season.

The Frenchman finished 17th in Singapore after attempting an alternative strategy that ultimately didn’t work in his favor. He started on medium tires like most of the field but extended his first stint unusually long before switching to softs late in the race – too late to make a significant impact and recover positions.

“A very difficult and frustrating race for us in the end,” Gasly told F1 TV after the race.

“We are just not quick or competitive enough at the moment.

“The lack of pace forced us to try some different strategies in the hope of improving our end result. We stayed out long on the mediums on the first stint and lost a lot of time to cars we were racing at the start.

"The plan then was to disrupt some cars behind in the hope to benefit Esteban to get something from the race."

The strategy didn’t pay off, though Esteban Ocon did improve by two positions, finishing 13th. This was largely due to a strong start rather than the car's performance during the race.

“The reality is three races ago [in Zandvoort] we were ninth place and at the last three races we have been far away from the top 10.

“We have to find some performance and there is a lot of work ahead of us to improve our current level,” Gasly concluded.