Alonso not making excuses on F1 return, will be at 100% "soon"

The Spaniard struggled for pace last time out in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, managing only 15th on the grid, while Alpine teammate Esteban Ocon progressed into Q3.

Alonso picked up a point on race day at Imola, benefitting from Kimi Raikkonen's post-race time penalty.

Assessing his performance so far in 2021, Alonso concedes he’s not quite performing at the peak of his powers but believes he will be at 100 percent "soon".

“I don’t know where I am currently in terms of percentage,” Alonso said in Thursday’s drivers’ press conference. “As I said before the season started, it will take a few races.

“It is the same for the people that changed teams as well for this year because there are things that every team is different in terms of steering wheel feedback, pedal feedback, the way the car responds to different things, kerb riding, braking performance, tyre degradation - they are things that you discover with races and with experience.

“That is something that is not different to me, it is even bigger for me because it’s not that I changed team, I changed sport, basically. It will take time. It is not an excuse. I just need to work harder and prepare the things better into the weekend. I changed teams and I changed categories many times in my career and it was never a problem.

“It will not be a problem this time either. Soon, we will be 100 percent.”

The Enstone-based outfit appears to have slipped back in the midfield fight relative to last year.

Alonso stressed the need for clean weekends due to how tight it is this year.

“I guess it is a difficult question that everyone tries to answer right now,” Alonso added. “I think the performance of the car is not in the place where we wanted to be. Fighting for Q3, we have no margin at the moment. There is a very tight group in the midfield, as we knew two or three tenths can make you finish in seventh or eighth, or 14th, 15th.

“We are in that group. We have no margin at all so if everything goes well in the weekend we can fight on the higher part of that group. If something goes wrong on that weekend you fall back quite easily. It’s the way I think it’s going to be for the whole season.”