How soon will the progress come at Alpine?

We are three races into the Formula 1 season.

While much remains the same from 2024 — Red Bull is leading the Constructors’ Championship and Max Verstappen is atop the Drivers’ standings — recent events have shaken the field up a bit. Mercedes is floundering, McLaren is strong, and Ferrari has certainly closed the gap to Red Bull.

Then there is a fascinating fight shaping up in the midfield, one that has Visa Cash App RB F1 Team in front at the moment thanks to a strong drive from Yuki Tsunoda in the Australian Grand Prix.

With so much on the line, and a short break until the Japanese Grand Prix, this is a good time to take stock of where each team stands at the moment. But rather than a simple review, we’ll look at the biggest question facing each team right now.

We start at the bottom of the table with Alpine, who have yet to open their account for the 2024 campaign.

Entering the 2024 Formula 1 season, Alpine admitted they would face a “challenging” start to the year. The A524 was underperforming, overweight, and the team was behind the development curve. That brought changes to their technical structure, and two-straight races with Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly starting at the back of the field.

How quickly can those changes pay off?

Alpine are likely hoping to follow a path blazed by McLaren a season ago. Last year it was the Woking-based outfit that faced a challenging start to the year, left “fighting for points” as Lando Norris explained to me ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. But by the summer they were fighting for podiums, and McLaren charged up the table to finish fourth.

Can Alpine truly follow a similar path?

There were some signs of life in Australia. After two-straight races saw Ocon and Gasly eliminated in Q1, Ocon advanced to Q2 largely on merit. Although there were only 19 cars in the field — more on that in a moment — it was a step forward for the team. Ocon was even in the mix for points on Sunday, until an incident forced an extra pit stop. While Alpine was still off their Australian pace from a season ago — Ocon’s fastest lap in 2024 was a 1:21.354, which his fastest 2023 lap was a 1:21.203 — it could be an indication that the progress is coming.

After all, that .154-second gap in Australia is smaller than the gap in Saudi Arabia. In 2023 Ocon posted a best lap of 1:33.222.

In Jeddah this year his best lap was 1:33.481, a gap of .259 seconds.

Progress?

“It was an unfortunate race today, as we had to make an extra stop to remove a tear-off stuck in the rear brake duct. Before the pit-stop I was running in a group with Alex [Albon] and Kevin [Magnussen], and in front of Nico [Hülkenberg],” said Ocon after the race. “Without that extra stop, we were probably in with a chance of scoring points looking at how the race unfolded. Today, and this weekend in general, the car felt a bit better and shows that we’re making some progress.”

Just how quickly can they turn that progress, into points?