Alpine atones for last year's hiding - by hiding key details on its 'A526'

It was somewhat ironic that the team which plunged to new depths in the Formula 1's constructors' championship last year was named Alpine. That said, it's at least fitting that it stands ahead of a mountain to climb as it seeks to arrest the often-mediocre performances seen across 2025, albeit largely due to the development tap being turned off decidedly early.

There were a few flickers of life across last season, confined largely to Pierre Gasly's side of the garage as the Frenchman remained motivated despite the Renault-owned team putting both eyes firmly on the 2026 ball. The switch to Mercedes power units, turning a works outfit into a manufacturer-owned customer squad, was controversial and led to strike action at Renault's powertrain headquarters in Viry-Chatillon - but one suspects the owners won't mind if it makes the team competitive at a lower price point.

Alpine launched its A526 on Friday, but the difficulty here is that the model shown at its Barcelona launch event is not particularly reminiscent of the car that ran at Silverstone earlier in the week. Thus, in the absence of images from its shakedown (at least, that we can use), we'll pinpoint what looks interesting on this launch model, and then determine whether it tallies with the test-spec machine.

Firstly, the front wing. Alpine's launch imagery presents us with a conventional distribution of wing elements, but with a very novel endplate treatment. The endplate itself has a dramatic inward sweep, aiming to strengthen the inwash effect around the front tyre, and this is paired with an outer fin that pushes the flow outwards along with the vortex tunnel. This outer fin didn't appear on the shakedown car, instead replaced by a horizontal endplate-mounted winglet, similar in scope to that seen on the Haas unveiled earlier in the week.

Leaked videos also confirm that the front wing profile is different. While the official pictures show a gradual fall from the outboard edges into a spoon-shaped centre, the central section appears to be much wider and flatter, creating a more obvious sweep into the raised wing tips. The nose, which appears to be a tribute to the 2000 Benetton (if it met with a belt sander), is much lower on the real car with the wing pylons further to the centre, propping up the nose from underneath.

There are other areas where the car is different. This launch model's suspension, for example, is incredibly basic; there's no inclination to the wishbones, which are mounted very closely together, and there's also the implication of push-rod operated springs. It was hence surprising to learn, then, that the A526 has pull-rod front suspension, and that the upper wishbone was mounted to the top corner of the chassis bulkhead. That means we have two teams operating with pull-rods at the front thus far, as Alpine joined Cadillac with an arrangement that has become less favoured by the expected top teams.

It's hard to make out what the real bargeboard arrangement is, given the camera quality and rain of the shakedown video. Alpine's launch images show a two-piece bargeboard package with a slot within the second element, which might hint at a slatted arrangement, but this would be mere guesswork at this point.

What we can say for sure is that the sidepods are much less boxy in reality than as presented on the launch car, and also features a channel over the top that feeds towards the top surface of the diffuser. It means the undercut is not quite as dramatic, but it allows the top surface airflow and that moving around the lower reaches of the sidepods to merge together more cleanly.

Other areas of note to be aware of: the real airbox is slightly less large than the one shown on the model, and Alpine has clearly tried to keep it reasonably small to ensure it does not offer any blockage to the rear wing. There's also push-rod suspension at the rear, as opposed to the ambiguous pull-rod of the model; Alpine is using Mercedes' gearbox for 2026, so it would naturally run with suspension in a similar layout given the hard points are incorporated into the gearbox casing. The real car also comes with a larger shark fin, longer-chord rear wing mounts, and a tiny fin underneath the T-cam to gently pull the airflow in this region downwards.

It's no surprise that teams would want to present a decoy car to the public, especially since the rules are so new and there has been no opportunity for any kind of convergence. But Alpine/Renault has a track record for this, often choosing to present the previous year's car - or, in the case of 2020, nothing at all - with some misleading modifications. I suppose it's for the birds, really; but in this situation, it's not helped when the real car has already been seen...

Alpine launched its 'A526' on a boat in Barcelona - certainly a titanic feat

Photo by: Alpine

On the subject of the real A526, technical chief David Sanchez felt buoyed by Alpine's first steps with a Mercedes powertrain in the back - having noted that the Silverstone shakedown had demonstrated solid reliability out of the box.

"It's gone very well. I would say since day one, they've been very open with us," Sanchez explained. "We've built a good relationship. For sure they are used to working with customer teams, and they are pretty good at it, so we're working in the most open-minded manner, we've got very good interactions. The integration of that power unit was pretty good, and now we're working our way through fixing all the little gremlins and focusing on reliability and integration."

Sanchez pointed at the front wing and the rear corner - which includes winglets around the brake drum that interact with the diffuser - as key areas for development as 2026 continues to unfold. Although the front wing has far fewer elements, two of those have to not only work at two distinctly different angles during a race - but must do so without damaging the flow field to the rest of the car.

And, while the floor might not be as powerful as last year's ground-effect iterations, there's still plenty to come from the diffuser area. "As much as there is no more ground effect," Sanchez adds, "I think people will still be keen to see a picture from the underside to see what the diffuser looks like."

Just as long as it's the real diffuser.

Just how different Alpine's launch A526 and the real thing will become clear in the coming days

Photo by: Alpine