The A524's poor form soon became apparent in testing, and Gasly qualified last in Sakhir, a place behind team-mate Esteban Ocon.

Both men struggled for pace throughout the race, and they eventually finished 17th and 18th, beating only Valtteri Bottas and Logan Sargeant, both of whom suffered lengthy delays.

Along with a disappointing on-track performance the team has also been hit by the news of the resignations and impending departures of technical director Matt Harman and aero chief Dirk de Beer.

Gasly believes that the team can develop the A524 and address its issues in the coming weeks. However he expects only limited progress to be made for the upcoming Saudi Arabian GP, and knows that other teams won't be standing still either.

"We need time because next week is exactly the same car," he said. "We've still got a couple of days, and I'm sure the guys will find certain things to improve the package we have. But as much as the other guys, they're not going to sleep, obviously

I'm sure there's a few things we can do to find a couple hundredths out of that package. But to see us back in the points and fighting with these guys ahead of us is going to take us a good few weeks. I know the guys will try to bring these upgrades as fast as they can."

He remains optimistic about the prospects of the team getting to the bottom of the problems with the launch spec car, citing the right "mentality" of the staff.

"I think about the talent, 500 people that are behind me," he said. "And no one's enjoying, no one's enjoying. No one's doing racing to be P18 and P17. And we all want to find solutions. We've all got to work as hard as we can.

"And the time will tell, but it might be a good thing for us to find even more potential within our group and within our team. We're aware of the situation, we're aware of the limitation. Everyone wants to find solutions.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524

Photo by: Erik Junius

"And I see the mentality is the right one inside the team. But you don't find solutions overnight on these cars. You need more than that. And that's why we have to be patient."

Gasly's Bahrain race was made more difficult by an issue with the left front wheelgun, which cost time at his first stop, and also delayed his second stop slightly.

"I think it was as we expected," he said when asked about his race by Motorsport.com. "Qualified on the last row and finished at the back of the field. I think we still tried to maximize what we had, we tried a different strategy.

"I had a good start, unfortunately, got bunched up, everything bunched up on the inside line, and lost ground there. But then after that the race was well maximised.

"I know we're struggling with the car. At the minute we're struggling with pitstops as well, and the new guns we have, which cost me around 10 seconds of race time. So yeah, it could have been slightly better, but still too far away from the points.

"So bigger picture, there's many things we can improve. And we'll try to work on them for the coming weekends."

Ocon meanwhile said that the team will learn from Bahrain, and he expects the Jeddah track to be more favourable for the A524.

"Jeddah last year and historically for us has been a stronger track than here. So the car should be a little bit better suited to Jeddah track, I hope, and hopefully, that's going to mean that we are closer to the pack than we were here.