Alpine boss blasts F1 team’s performance as ‘amateurish’ at times

With the squad having faced a challenging first part to the campaign, having scored just eight points and lying sixth in the constructors’ championship, Rossi has been far from impressed at the job he thinks the team has done.

Speaking to French channel Canal+ before qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix, where its driver Pierre Gasly delivered a season-best fifth place on the grid, Rossi criticised the performance so far this year.

“It’s disappointing, it’s actually bad,” he said. “This year ended up starting with a flawed performance and flawed delivery. It’s obvious our position in the standings is not worthy of the resources we spend, and we are quite far – in fact very far – from this year’s end goal.

“I’m noting not only an obvious lack of performance and rigour in the delivery, but also potentially a state of mind that is not up to this team’s past standards.”

Alpine’s most difficult grand prix event of the year came in Baku last weekend, as it endured a spate of problems throughout practice, qualifying and the race to miss out on the points.

But Rossi said that another low moment was the season opener in Bahrain, which was overshadowed by Esteban Ocon’s triple whammy of penalties for starting outside his grid slot, the team touching the car during a pitstop and then pitlane speeding.

Rossi added: “I did not like the first grand prix, because there was a lot of – I’m sorry for saying this – amateurishness, which led to a result that wasn’t right. It was mediocre, bad.

“And the last race in Baku was tremendously similar to the one in Bahrain. That is not acceptable.”

Rossi said while making mistakes was part and parcel of F1, he said what was not allowed was repeating errors.  

“You’re allowed to make mistakes – it’s a basic principle, you learn from your mistakes,” he said. “But you do [need to] learn, and when you make the same mistakes twice, it means you haven’t learnt and you’re not taking responsibility.

“That is not acceptable.”