Lando Norris reiterated in Japan last weekend his belief that Alpine is in "another league" compared to McLaren, insisting his team should be nowhere near the Enstone outfit in F1's Constructors' standings.
Alpine comprehensively outscored McLaren at Suzuka thanks to a productive double top-ten finish delivered in the race by Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso.
The French outfit now enjoys a 13-point lead over its rival.
Over the summer, as the two teams sparred for P4 in the championship's standings, Norris implied that Alpine was doing a poor job exploiting a package that was head and shoulders above McLaren's MCL36.
At Suzuka, the Briton repeated his view, and took another biting dig at the French outfit.
"Like I’ve said so many times, they’re so much quicker than us," Norris said, quoted by The Race.
"I have no clue how we’re still fighting them in the championship. Like… they are another league to us at the minute. And yet we were somehow ahead – maybe not after today…
"I’m happy we’ve been able to fight them so far into the season, it shows we’ve done a very good job in all other areas, with reliability, with maximising our performances, taking opportunities, not making mistakes.
"They must’ve done a lot worse than us on all of those areas to only just be ahead of us in the championship with the car that they have.
"So… not a surprise, I think. It’s not really a big fight at the minute, because they’re so much quicker. "But… we’ll keep trying. Yeah. Keep trying to limit the points loss we have at the minute."
Alpine sporting director Alan Permane responded to Norris' slightly derisive comments with a cutting remark of his own, insisting his team wasn't paying much attention to McLaren as its focused on bridging its gap to Mercedes up ahead.
"Lando keeps saying that doesn’t he? We only just need to be ahead," said Permane. "I’m not sure why he keeps on. I guess we’ve got him rattled.
"We’re much more focused on Mercedes. We’re trying to beat Mercedes, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to get ourselves on to that level.
"And of course we had a huge setback in Singapore, but I think here it’s back to normal and I would imagine the next races we can do the same.
"The car is clearly getting quicker and I think it’s getting closer to those top guys."
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