Fernando Alonso believes that Alpine will be limited to fighting in the lower tier of the top-ten this season unless favourable circumstances push the French outfit higher.
Alonso ran as high as seventh in the Styrian Grand Prix after qualifying P8, but crossed the checkered flag just inside the points in ninth position after a lively afternoon of midfield dicing, sandwiched between Aston Martin's Lance Stroll and AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda.
The Spaniard reckons that the Red Bull Ring isn't Alpine's best track, a view supported by teammate Esteban Ocon's depressed performance on Sunday.
But Alonso also believes the Enstone squad will be challenged this season to fight higher up the pecking order on its merit.
"Obviously we know our strengths and we know our weaknesses so we try to use them in different places," said Alonso.
"I don’t think Austria is our best circuit as we saw [in qualifying], and as we see [in the race].
"Unfortunately, we have two races here so we have to manage the damage that we can have in terms of points.
"I think we did it well in Race 1 as we scored one more [point] than AlphaTauri and two less than Aston Martin so we managed to limit this damage. But yeah, in Race 2 it’s going to be another challenging weekend.
"We will try to do better, but it is going to be difficult. I think this is our limit.
"I feel like I was maximising everything being in Q3, maximising [in the race], being in the points. I don’t think there is more. You need some retirements or luck."
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As the season unfolds, Alonso dismissed racing on a par with his McLaren and Ferrari colleagues, unless he gets lucky, but considers Aston Martin as Alpine's closest rival.
"I think we were very, very close in terms of performance with Aston Martin," he said.
"All the other teams [ahead] were faster than us by a long way. We see Leclerc having a puncture, or front wing damage, in lap one, and still fishing in front of us, so imagine the superiority they have in terms of performance.
"That will be the trend, I think, for the rest of the year. The cars will not change too much for any team. So [there] will be some circuits better than others for different teams and different car performance.
"I don’t think Austria is one of the best for us but we will try to get better and next weekend we need to test something, we have something in our head to test the performance of the car so it’s a good opportunity to have another race.
"But, yeah, I really hope now that it rains or something next weekend. If not we will be around ninth or 10th, so maybe we need a bit of extreme conditions to be better than that."
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