Miami F1 News: Alpine CEO Blasts Teams Performance - "Not Worthy Of The Resources We Spend"
Alpine F1 team CEO Laurent Rossi has delivered a damning verdict for the French team for their "disappointing" start to the season.
Both Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly have four points on the board ahead of the Miami Grand Prix. Ocon had to retire from the Bahrain GP, came eighth in Saudi Arabia, fifteenth in Azerbaijan, and retired in Australia when Gasly crashed into him taking them both out of the race. Gasly managed to finish ninth in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and fourteenth in Azerbaijan after his DNF in Australia.
The French team are currently sat in sixth place in the constructors' standings with Ocon in thirteenth and Gasly in fourteenth in the drivers' standings.
During an interview with the media in Miami, as quoted by es.motorsport.com, Rossi explained:
"It is disappointing, it is really bad, this year has started with a defective performance, it is a lot, and it is evident. Our position in the classification is not worthy of the resources that we spend, and we are quite far, far away from the final goal of this season.
"I am noticing, not only an evident lack of performance and rigor at work, but also a potential state of mind that is not up to the past standards of this team.
"I didn't like the first Grand Prix, because there was a lot, sorry to say it, dilettantism or amateurism, choose the word that sounds best, which led to a result that was not correct, that was mediocre, bad."
Rossi continued:
"And the last race in Baku was similar to the one in Bahrain, that is not acceptable. You are allowed to make mistakes, it is a basic principle, you learn from them, but you do [need] to learn, and when you make the same mistakes twice, it means you haven't learned and you're not taking responsibility, that's not acceptable."