Fernando Alonso upheld his run of Q3 appearances in Saturday's qualifying for the French Grand Prix, but the Alpine driver admitted to being worried by his performance gap in the session to McLaren rival Lando Norris.
Ahead of this weekend's round of racing at the Circuit Paul Ricard, Alpine and McLaren are equal on points in the Constructors' standings and locked in a battle for fourth place.
Alonso had been confident of the Enstone squad gaining an upper hand this weekend over its top midfield rival, but while the Spaniard qualified just two positions behind Norris in P7, he called the 0.147s gap to the latter "unreachable".
"We came here with higher expectations maybe, after Silverstone and Austria being very competitive," said Alonso. "We thought here we would be in front of the midfield.
"But AlphaTauri and McLaren they seem to improve the car a lot with updates. So we struggled.
"To be honest now when I saw the times, Lando half a second in front is a little bit too much, unreachable for us, and that is a bit worrying."
Alonso noted that the wind swirling around Paul Ricard had complicated the team's set-up work more than usual in the various sessions.
"It was not an easy weekend," he explained. "Sometimes we come on Friday, the car is working fine and we do minimum changes on the set-up.
"While here we were not happy in FP1, not happy in FP2 and in FP3 it was still challenging, the understeer.
"Now in qualifying the wind rotates like 90 degrees, it was a crosswind on the straight, now it’s a headwind on the main straight, it changed again a couple of corners. So it has been not an easy weekend."
However, the relative strength displayed by his A522 on Friday's long runs offered Alonso hope that he'll be able to fight with his McLaren adversary or perhaps prevail in the all-important exercise of tyre management.
"Yesterday the long runs seemed quite strong for us, so let’s see whether we can make some gains tomorrow," said the two-time world champion.
"Tyre management is going to be a big factor as they are overheating and graining, so it’ll be a real challenge in the heat."
Norris and Alonso's McLaren and Alpine teammates - Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon - will launch their race this afternoon from ninth and tenth on the grid, with both drivers benefitting from the engine penalties and grid drops impacting Ferrari's Carlos Sainz and Haas' Kevin Magnussen.
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