Fernando Alonso expressed his belief that McLaren are "unreachable" to Alpine – but Lando Norris is not convinced the veteran is being entirely honest.
The French team has reeled in their rivals in the constructors' championship. Heading into the French Grand Prix, both teams have scored 81 points and are neck-and-neck at the half-way stage of the season.
McLaren took an early lead in that battle, scoring big points in Australia and at Imola to get a jump on their midfield rivals. But Alpine have scored consistently all season and secured their best results of the year at each of the last three race weekends.
A new car update for McLaren helped Norris to out-qualify Alonso in France by half-a-second, causing concern for the Spaniard. "We came here with higher expectations, maybe, after Silverstone and Austria being very competitive," he told reporters.
"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.
"But let's see what is their race pace, tyre management strategy, everything. Hopefully we can challenge him." The 40-year-old did not convince Norris, though, who believes the veteran may be trying to pull a trick on him heading into the race.
Asked about Alonso's comments, the Brit replied: "Oh, that's Fernando. He's playing mind games with you. He knew I was coming here [the media pen] after. I don't believe a word he says.
"We weren't expecting Q3 today so P5 is a good step and I'm hoping a similar scenario happens tomorrow where we're thinking it might be a tough race, but hopefully it's just a really easy one. We'll see but I'm expecting a good race and a good battle with Fernando.
"It has been a very good day. I think before qualifying, we were discussing whether or not we should even talk about Q3 because it was just very far away from what we thought we could achieve. But I think as we've gone through the weekend, we've understood the package more and more and the upgrades and the updates and just how to maximise them and how to find the limit of it all and we did that."
