Having finished at the back of the midfield in the first two races of the season, it looks like Alpine has taken a step forward in Portimão, where they introduced a new floor in addition to the updated  front wing that debuted in Imola.

Admittedly it wasn't the best day for Fernando Alonso who lost eight tenths of a second between FP3 and quali, spun in the very first laps of Q1 and didn’t make it to Q3 having finished in 13th place.

On the other hand Esteban Ocon managed to close the first two qualifying sessions in P4 and he will be starting 6th behind Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari tomorrow at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve.

“I’m very pleased with that one!” he said.

“Thanks to the team for their hard work and dedication in recent weeks as it’s made the difference today.”

#PortugueseGP Quali 🏁 pic.twitter.com/1FOAsXr9os

— Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) May 1, 2021

During free practice he climbed up from the 10th position in the first session on Friday to the 5th place in this morning’s FP3. 

“We made a good step between practice and qualifying, and everything worked really well. We aim to keep finding these improvements and carry this progress forward.”

Starting from tomorrow’s race, where Ocon is looking forward to scoring points.

“We’re starting up there for the race, so that’s good news. We know it’ll be challenging tomorrow but overtaking is possible and there are some differences on starting tyre throughout the grid. The aim is to score points.”