Alonso Has Doubts over Williams being Genuine Threat to Alpine on Regular Basis

Fernando Alonso does not believe Williams Racing will be fighting his Alpine F1 Team on a regular basis, despite George Russell’s impressive performance during the recent Austrian Grand Prix.

Russell starred at the Red Bull Ring, making it through to the top ten shootout for the first time as a Williams driver on Saturday before fighting for most of the day within the top ten. 

Unfortunately for Russell, he slipped out of the points as Alonso caught and passed him with just a handful of laps remaining to leave him eleventh, the third time in his Williams career that he has missed out on the points by just one position.

But despite this, Alonso does not foresee Williams being a genuine top ten contender in every race, although he will need to wait a couple of races to see if the Grove-based team have turned a corner or not.

“No, I don’t think so,” Alonso is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com after being asked about Williams being a genuine threat to Alpine. “I think they have made a step forward, but also we checked last year in Austria, they started 11th, so it seems to be a circuit they perform really well at.

“So I think we need to wait a couple of races to see if they are fast or not. But here last weekend, they were closer to us, and this weekend, we had a little bit more margin.”

Alonso has now scored points in each of the past four rounds, and he hopes the momentum he has built up continues into the British Grand Prix weekend.

“I’m happy with the progress in these two weeks,” said the Spaniard.  “It is up to us to keep it going into Silverstone.

“If we can repeat this kind of performance, it will put us in top seven or top eight, and that is a step forward for sure.”