Alpine likely to remain uncompetitive for second successive weekend at the F1 Saudi Arabia Grand Prix

Alpine has reportedly not brought any upgrades to the A524 heading into the 2024 F1 Saudi Arabian GP and are likely to remain uncompetitive.

After a poor performance in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, Alpine are not expected to have any improvement as they will not be bringing any upgrades to Saudi Arabia. After the end of pre-season testing, the A524 was deemed to be "overweight and aerodynamically inefficient," which affected their performance on both single-lap runs and race runs.

Esteban Ocon finished in P17 in Bahrain, followed by his teammate Pierre Gasly in P18. This was an extremely poor result for the team that was competing in the midfield until the earlier season.

Formerly, the team had set a 100-race goal, after which they were expected to fight for the championship. But analyzing their performance in the new aerodynamic era, they have only downgraded.

Their main rivals in the earlier seasons, McLaren, have been performing much better since the second half of 2023, and kept it up with their drivers finishing in P6 and P8 in Bahrain.

After Alpine's Technical Director, Matt Harman, and Head of Aerodynamics, Erik de Beer, announced their exit from the team last week, it is apparent that the French outfit is not in a good position.

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Alpine team boss uncertain regarding upgrade package's arrival

With the team suffering both on and off track, team principal Bruno Famin is still optimistic that improvements will arrive sooner or later. However, he remains uncertain when that will happen as he told Motorsport:

"How long it will take, I don’t know, to be honest."

"Like all the teams, we have upgrades coming, of course."

He added that the team is pushing hard to bring the upgrades soon.

“We have theoretical figures about what the upgrades will bring, we’re pushing for having those upgrades as soon as possible…"

“We really need to understand and to find solutions. And we’re on it.”

Alpine's former team principal, Otmar Szafnauer, left the team less than a year ago mid-season and Bruno Famin was then promoted to the position. Their performance has not improved over time and they continue to struggle.

Due to the overweight car, less paint was used to cover up the carbon fibre in an attempt to make the car lighter, but that has not helped them much in performance.