APRIL 17, 2001

Prost "not too bad"

JEAN ALESI has shown the reliability of Prost's AP04 by finishing every race of the season so far, but the pace is clearly not there as he has ended at the bottom end of the top-10 every time.

However, Alain Prost is refusing to become downcast. He expects the car to improve soon, and after his team showed good pace in pre-season testing he says the season is not as dismal as it looks.

"We are not too bad honestly," said Prost. "We are improving a lot, we know what we have to do, and we have some steps coming.

"I was expecting more but we said publicly that we expected to be around 10th and that is where we are.

"We improved the car a lot, and its performance is a lot better," he continued. "Everyone is working hard and sometimes you can make just a step because to improve everywhere is hard."

However, Prost hinted that the AP04 is a difficult car to handle and suggested that it is extremely sensitive to change and that makes set-up decisions difficult.

"Sometimes the car works well and sometimes not well without changing much," he said. "We need to be focussed to finish all the races we can with reliability and make some improvements to make progress the way we are doing."