Lando Norris declared Alpine are doing "a pretty bad job" this season – despite the fact they lead his McLaren team in the constructors' standings.
While Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes have once again been untouchable to the rest of the grid, things have been tighter in the battle for fourth place. Alpine currently have the upper hand, with strong results in Belgium and the Netherlands since the summer break.
Those performances saw them move to 125 points for the season so far in the constructors' championship. McLaren are their nearest rivals with 101, having fallen behind in recent weeks.
Zero points in Belgium were followed up by six earned at Zandvoort by Norris, while Daniel Ricciardo never looked likely to trouble the top 10 as his struggles continued. On the other hand, Alpine have been developing their car and both Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon are regulars in the points positions of late.
While McLaren look to be in danger of being cut adrift, Norris spoke highly of the job his team have done this year. And he suggested that their rivals at Enstone should be a lot further ahead at this point than they actually are.
"Alpine has been ahead of us since pretty much day one of the season and generally have been ahead of us," he told reporters at Monza. "It's maybe three or four races this season where we might just have been a little bit quicker than them.
"Otherwise, the majority, and quite easily the majority, they've been a bit of a better car. So for them to only just be ahead of us in the championship is more of – we've done a very good job and they've done a pretty bad job."
Elaborating, Norris explained that, while he believes Alpine's car is quicker than McLaren, they have also made more mistakes and have suffered with reliability issues. He added: "When you see the margins of qualifying from them to us, and sometimes their pace in the race compared to us sometimes, it's never that much the opposite way around. So they have a better car.
"They have just done a worse job throughout the season and made more mistakes. They've had more problems with the car. Fernando was in Australia for P2 or P3 in qualifying and we were miles away. So yeah, they've had a better car and they have pretty much all season."
