Why Alpine was annoyed with its China double-points finish, even after a torrid 2025

Even if his internal psyche struggled to come to terms with Alpine's dreadful 2025 season, Pierre Gasly's countenance was a paragon of patience. Amid the seemingly continuous periods of upheaval at the team, characterised by a revolving door of management figures and technical personnel, Gasly was keen to demonstrate his belief that the team had brighter days ahead.

A midfield mainstay, Alpine's fortunes had dropped over 2024 and 2025. Let's roll back to 2023, where the team was very much in a league of its own through the year; the team was sixth-best and only had a playmate on track when Aston Martin's impressive start to the year petered out. For all of the talk about five-year plans and 100-race targets of championship contention that had preceded the Alpine brand's arrival in F1, its fortunes began to drift the other way. 

2024 started off terribly with an overweight car, although the year was rescued by its 2-3 result in Brazil and a raft of late-season updates that catapulted Gasly into consistent top-eight qualifying results. The momentum didn't carry over; 2025 started similarly, but without the 11th-hour reprisal as the Enstone team stopped putting any resources beyond a tiny team of engineers into updates.

Its focus was on 2026, although it was less forthcoming about its plans compared to some of the other teams' neatly curated narratives. Ditching its own Renault powertrain project for an off-the-peg Mercedes unit was central to this, sensing that the Brixworth-developed package was likely to be a winner.

The A526 certainly demonstrated, at least visually, that the team had pushed the boat out - although this was scarcely remarked upon given the team's lacklustre 2025 season. While it showed good pace in testing, its race runs suggesting that it would be in the ballpark of the upper echelons of the midfield, the Australia opener had been a missed opportunity. Gasly managed a point, sure, but the team hadn't managed to fully realise its potential. This was rectified for China; Gasly outqualified the Red Bulls, finished sixth, while Franco Colapinto bagged his first point for the team with 10th.

Usually, this would be cause for celebration; Alpine managed its first double-points finish in over a year with encouraging speed in both qualifying and the race. Instead, there was a sense from both drivers that it could have - and should have - had more.

"I must say, I am very happy," Gasly began, recounting his race in Shanghai. "But deep inside me, the very competitive Pierre is a little annoyed not to get [fifth]. I really felt comfortable in fifth before the safety car; I was pulling away, pace was all fine. I wasn't getting too carried away because I knew with these new cars and this new regs, it's not about whether there is going to be a safety car, it's when it's going to be a safety car. 

Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls, Pierre Gasly, Alpine

Photo by: James Sutton / Formula 1 / Formula Motorsport Ltd via Getty Images

"At the restart, for whatever reason, I didn't have the power when I went on power out of the last corner. So, Ollie passed me very easily, lost the position there. And then the mid-race and all the fighting with the Haas, with Max and all of that, I kind of lost ground a bit on Bearman. 

"Once I managed to clear all of them, I think I was a bit more than five seconds behind Max and eight seconds behind Bearman. It was quali lap after quali lap, so on this side it was really enjoyable. I managed to catch up, but I put in my mind I'm getting them no matter what. And in the end, I just came short by two seconds, but still a very good day for the team."

That's a two-point swing for Gasly, then, but Colapinto arguably had to swallow a bigger loss. The timing of the safety car was far more detrimental to his opening stint on hard tyres, given that he was unable to reclaim the time loss from staying out versus those who stopped, and then lost around seven seconds (plus change, depending on the scope of his floor damage) after Esteban Ocon tipped him into a spin at Turn 3. 

This derailed Colapinto's charge. He'd broken beyond the precipice of the points, yes, but an assault on Carlos Sainz should have come sooner before the Argentine's medium tyres had begun to grain. Taking into account the fallout from the safety car, getting somewhere in the vicinity of Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar should have been achievable.

"We should have got many more points than what we had, and that's the annoying bit," Colapinto mused, doubling up on the grievances of the Alpine pair. "But it's good to be annoyed by that. Of course, when this opportunity slips away, it's not nice."

When comparing Colapinto's pace to that of Lawson, the Alpine driver had a clear edge on the hard tyre versus the Kiwi's mediums. Once Lawson got his own set of hard tyres after stopping under the safety car, this now gave him a slender advantage in terms of pace; not a huge one, mind, but around a tenth or so per lap. At the start of his medium stint, Colapinto was a fair lick quicker than Lawson, initially a second a lap faster before the delta began to dwindle after about eight laps on the C3s; by the time Colapinto had started to catch Sainz despite tyre graining, Lawson was lapping at a quicker pace once more.

If we put Gasly's peak Shanghai result in fifth and Colapinto in seventh, that's a total of seven points potentially missed - given that we expect a heavily contested midfield affair, these points could be a vital sum.

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Dom Gibbons / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Plus, contextualised by testing and the China race, it seems that Australia qualifying was an outlier; Gasly stated after putting his car in seventh at Shanghai that he'd have made Q3 in Australia if he could get another chance - noting that his race pace at Albert Park was also rather strong. Top speed is good, thanks to the Mercedes powertrain and its A526's aero efficiency, and it seems to be able to blend that with reliable handling traits throughout the rest of the lap.

"Looking at 2025 where we were and where we are now, it's a completely different league. So, I'm very pleased," Gasly added.

"We did a good job in qualifying, a couple of tenths to the McLaren. The first stints I wasn't losing massive ground compared to the Ferrari. There's still many little things which we need to fine-tune and fix, which are not like unfixable limitations. So, I'm pretty confident. China was special. Hopefully, the performance will be quite similar to here in the coming races."

It seemed that Alpine reached a key point in its understanding of its A526 during the China weekend, one that it'll have to carry into Suzuka. This is a circuit that will test overall grip and adhesion through the myriad medium-speed corners around the track, and thus provide a bit more evidence of Alpine's strengths and weaknesses this season.

Yet, the early signs are encouraging. Alpine has kept very close company with Haas and Racing Bulls this season, and it must start to capitalise further on the opportunities presented to it - at least, if it doesn't plan on ruing the seven lost points from China. 

Esteban Ocon, Haas F1 Team, Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Lars Baron / Getty Images