Alpine cashes in and dreams big: could this be the surprise team of the season?
Alpine continues to surprise the Formula 1 paddock. Helped in part by McLaren’s disastrous weekend, the Enstone-based team secured an outstanding sixth-place finish with Franco Colapinto, who has looked completely revived since the Miami Grand Prix, while Pierre Gasly crossed the line in eighth place, putting the disappointment of Florida firmly behind him and returning to the strong form that had defined the earlier stages of his season.
Since Melbourne, the performances of the Alpine A526 have consistently impressed. The Mercedes power unit has clearly provided an important boost, but the hard work carried out back at the factory following a disastrous 2025 campaign has also proven incredibly productive. Alpine’s objective is now crystal clear: continue pushing, continue developing and establish itself as the true “queen” of the Formula 1 midfield battle.
Below are the reactions and emotions shared by Pierre Gasly, Franco Colapinto and Flavio Briatore after another highly encouraging weekend for Alpine.
The thoughts of Pierre Gasly
“Overall, it’s a really good result for the team and important points for the Championship. Personally, it was more about damage limitation, where we recovered from a difficult weekend up to this point to finish P8 and inside the points. Overall, though, I struggled again with the car and, as a team, we need to understand why that is and aim to fix some areas. There is a lot of work to do to get the car back into a good window and that is our objective from now until Monaco.
“As for today’s race, we had a difficult start with the Medium tyres, which were quite cold and had very little grip in the opening laps, but eventually we recovered some positions and then entered the battle with Liam Lawson towards the end. It was difficult to find a place to overtake him and we simply couldn’t get past, so we had to settle for eighth place. Now I’m really looking forward to Monaco. It’s my favourite place of the year, so hopefully we can fix some of these limitations and arrive there with more confidence and more performance.”
Welcome back, Franco Colapinto
Thanks to his sixth-place finish, the Argentine driver secured the best result of his Formula 1 career since making his debut in the sport. It was a hugely important achievement that highlighted the clear improvement in Franco Colapinto’s performances, which now appear far more competitive and fully capable of matching the potential of the Alpine A526.
“From where we started this weekend to ending up with a double points finish for the team, it’s a great result and a fantastic reward for everyone in the team who has worked so hard. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done collectively and today is a great team result. It’s also my best result in Formula 1, which makes me very happy, and it builds on the performances we showed in Miami,” he said.
“We know we benefited from the misfortune of others, and it’s never a great feeling to gain from other people’s problems, but we maximised everything we could and brought the car home to the finish,” he added.
“I also had a scary moment coming out of the pits after my stop, where I touched a wet patch, then moved towards the white line and slid towards the wall. Fortunately, I hit the wall sideways and only suffered a small amount of damage, which didn’t require repairs or affect the car’s performance. As we know, there is still more work to do to become more competitive, bring more performance to the car and close the gap to the teams ahead of us on pure merit,” he concluded.
All the happiness of Flavio Briatore
“Congratulations to the whole team for this result where we collected 12 points. We executed a good strategy, the drivers did an excellent job on track and now we extend our advantage in P5 of the Constructors’ Championship. We had a difficult day on Friday, but the team worked hard to understand some things about the car and now we leave with a positive result as a team.”
“I’m happy for Franco for achieving his best Formula 1 result so far with sixth place, so well done to him for his commitment. As for Pierre, it was a good recovery from P14 on the grid. There is still a lot of hard work ahead if we want to improve our competitiveness. The drivers are still sharing similar comments about the car and there is still a lot of performance to unlock before Monaco next time out,” he concluded.
Alpine leaves the weekend with renewed confidence, a healthy points haul and growing belief that the team is becoming one of the standout stories of the Formula 1 season. The pace of the A526 is improving race after race, the drivers are increasingly comfortable with the package and the atmosphere around the team feels completely transformed compared to the struggles seen just one year ago.
Leave a Reply