F1 | Alpine overtakes McLaren in the constructors' championship in France

BWT Alpine F1 Team took fourth place in the Constructors' Championship, after placing both cars in the points at the end of a home race – the French Grand Prix – on the Circuit Paul-Ricard. Fernando Alonso took an excellent sixth place and Esteban Ocon finished eighth.

With the four points he earned, Esteban took home, after the third attempt, his first points won "at home" in Formula 1. Tenth on the starting grid, he crossed the finish line in eighth place. It was also a good Sunday for Fernando, with the seventh consecutive placing in the points thanks, in particular, to the overtaking of Lando Norris's McLaren, carried out from the first lap and which proved decisive for the conquest of sixth place. Today, the Spaniard achieved another Formula 1 record, that of the highest number of laps completed on the track: 18.672.

Esteban received a five-second penalty after contact with Yuki Tsunoda on the first lap, but after serving it in his only pit stop, the French driver showed great patience and managed to catch up and get the points thanks to a great second overtaking which saw him catch Daniel Ricciardo's McLaren from the outside at Turn 10.

Both drivers made a strong start from seventh and tenth on the grid, with Fernando and Esteban moving up to sixth and eighth respectively. The safety car, which intervened on lap 18 after Charles Leclerc's accident, allowed most of the drivers to return to the pits. Fernando went first to switch to hard tyres, followed soon after by Esteban who – after serving his penalty at the end of the pit stop – returned to the track behind Ricciardo who he had overtaken on lap seven thanks to a nice maneuver at the Curva 8.

Finally, Fernando crossed the finish line in sixth place, managing to hold off Norris. Instead, Esteban, after showing patience, managed to take eighth place from Ricciardo with surgical precision seven laps from the finish line, at the end of an excellent maneuver on the outside of Turn 10.

The team now has 93 points in the Constructors' Championship ahead of next week's Hungarian Grand Prix, the last race before the summer break.

*Alpine press release