Alpine day 1 Bahrain test: Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly face teething problems. Alpine struggles on day 1 of Bahrain F1 testing.

Day 1 in Bahrain was far from memorable for the Enstone-based team.

Teething problems

The Alpine team did not get off to the best start in Bahrain. This season, the Enstone squad decided to transition from a Renault ‘factory’ team to a Mercedes customer team, and their first day on the Sakhir track proved challenging. Over eight hours of running, Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly, who took turns at the wheel of the A526, completed only 75 laps in total—worse only than Aston Martin. The biggest issues came in the morning with the Argentine driver, who managed just 28 laps with a best time more than five seconds slower than Lando Norris’ fastest lap of the day. The situation improved slightly in the afternoon with Gasly, who managed to cover more distance at the wheel of the team’s brand-new car under Flavio Briatore’s management.

“It wasn’t an easy morning for me in the car,” Colapinto admitted, “because a couple of issues interrupted much of our program. These things happen during testing, especially with a new car, and it’s important for all of us to learn and implement the right solutions for next time. Pierre managed to complete several laps in the afternoon, which gives us a lot of data to evaluate and, hopefully, means that when I return to the car on Friday we can have a productive day and add more laps to our total. It will also be interesting to push the car a bit here in Bahrain while we continue to develop our overall package.”

Nielsen’s perspective

The difficulties of day 1 were also acknowledged by Managing Director Steve Nielsen: “We faced some challenges,” he admitted. “Several issues with the car forced us to stop the morning session more than once and make some changes. As expected with a completely new car, there will always be problems, and it’s important to resolve them quickly and implement measures to prevent them from recurring. Sometimes this is normal in testing, and it’s important to see a positive reaction from the entire team, including the drivers, in tackling these setbacks. In the afternoon, we saw a good turnaround that allowed us to fix some of the morning issues, and we had a slightly more productive session with Pierre. The goal is to return tomorrow with Pierre in the car for the full day, adding more laps and mileage to the car while continuing to learn and improve the package.”