Alpine boss, Otmar Szafnauer is confident that the French team can take the fight to its rivals once the development war gets underway.

Of course, the French outfit suffered a major set-back in Australia when Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly clashed at the restart. Nonetheless, buoyed by the giant step forward Aston Martin has taken this season, Szafnauer is convinced his team can take the fight to its rivals.

"We think we can fight with them," said the American. "We too have a decent-size upgrade coming for Baku and then a little bit more only a week later in Miami, so we continue to push the upgrades out.

"The important thing is that they all work when we put them on the car," he admitted, "and we have good correlation with our simulation tools. We had good correlation last year and if that continues and if we continue to push the upgrades, we'll take that development fight over the season to the others around us."

While Gasly finished 9th in Bahrain, his teammate's car was eventually retired due to the sheer number of time penalties meted out to its driver, while at Jeddah the pair finished 8th and 9th.

Looking good for a double-points finish in Melbourne, the pair were eliminated when Gasly went off track at the restart and collected his teammate on rejoning the track.

The damage to both cars was significant and despite the long break between Melbourne and Baku has compromised progress on the upgrade programme.

"The accident has shifted the priorities," admits Szafnauer. "For now, we need spare parts for Baku.

"You don’t just rebuild things like a front wing in a fortnight," he continues. "We still have to check whether that has an influence on whether we can bring our development package to its full extent."

Looking ahead to Baku, he says: It's really hard to know what other will bring. Last year, if I look back, I think our development rate was pretty good, and if we can keep up the same this year, we should, over the year, get closer.

"It's really hard to know. As you know, it's a relative game. I know what we've got coming. What I don't know is what they have coming."