Alpine’s 2026 reset delivers as Pierre Gasly leads stunning rise past Red Bull

After spending F1 2025 propping up the back of the pack, Alpine has even bested Red Bull at the start of 2026 as Team Enstone eyes a potential fourth-place turnaround.

From a distant last place in F1 2025, Alpine has shown up as one of the top performing cars at the start of the new regulation cycle, and it appears the switch-off to concentrate on the new regulations has been the right choice.

Pierre Gasly leads Alpine surge past Red Bull early 2026

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Alpine was a team simply going through the motions in F1 2025, having opted against trying to waste valuable resources and mindpower on chasing infinitessimal gains with an uncompetitive platform in the final year of the old regulation set.

It meant it was a fairly miserable year for the Enstone-based squad, which spent the entirety of the season toiling around towards the back, with only a few brighter moments along the way, courtesy of Pierre Gasly, as the French driver put his experience to good use to rack up a few minor points places.

It was a huge disappointment for the team, with managing director Steve Nielsen revealing at the end of last season that, “in terms of capital expenditure at the factory, there’s not much missing there, which, to be honest, makes it all the more disappointing that what we put on the track doesn’t really reflect the talent and the facilities that we have, which is something we absolutely need to put right.”

2026 marked something of a reset for Alpine, following on from further changes on the organisational front following the resignation of Oli Oakes a quarter of the way through last season, with Nielsen stepping into the defacto team principal role under the title of managing director under the watchful eye of Flavio Briatore, a man who has played as big a role in the team’s long history as the Benetton family after their takeover of the former Toleman squad in the mid-1980s.

Alpine’s parent company, the Renault Group, opted against continuing power unit development for the new regulations and, instead, has chosen to become a Mercedes customer – a safe bet for a stable engine platform, given the proven performance and reliability levels of Mercedes’ High-Performance Powertrain department over the years.

Certainly, the move was appealing, despite the history and longevity of the now-defunct Renault power unit programme that operated out of Viry-Chatillion over four decades. Last year, sources suggested that the power unit performance relative to the likes of Mercedes and then-front-running Honda was circa seven-tenths of a second a lap, with confidence that the chassis was otherwise quite tidy – but no amount of aero development could ever close that gap.

So, concentrating on the low-hanging fruit that the new regulations represented made sense. At a time when the likes of Red Bull were continuing to push ahead with updates in a bid to ensure it had developed an understanding of its processes amid correlation issues, Alpine switched off the 2025 tap and, instead, went all-in on being ready for the new regulations.

Noises heading into the winter were positive: both Nielsen and racing director Dave Greenwood expressed some confidence that things would look better in ’26, as the A526 project was hitting its performance and weight targets.

Of course, given Alpine finished well adrift of the rest in 2025, 48 points behind the ninth-placed team, almost anything would represent a step forward, but the start to 2026 has vindicated much of the decision-making last year, as Team Enstone has vaulted up the rankings to place fifth overall after the first three rounds.

There hasn’t been any luck involved in this either. In fact, Alpine could very well have been fourth if it hadn’t been for Franco Colapinto being knocked down a few spots by Haas’ Esteban Ocon during the Chinese Grand Prix, having put in a storming weekend in Shanghai after a quiet first round in Australia netted Pierre Gasly 10th place.

The Argentine driver returned to the points for the first time since the 2024 United States Grand Prix when he finished 10th in Shanghai, but it’s a mark that expectations have increased considerably that he was left frustrated by only finishing 10th, as he had been in the battle for around sixth place – where Gasly finished – when the incident with Ocon occurred.

China marked Colapinto’s high point of performance of the short season so far, but there are signs that he has made considerable progress relative to his far more experienced teammate, Pierre Gasly, who has been one of the stars of the opening three rounds; he’s the only driver not in a Mercedes or Ferrari to have scored points in all three Grands Prix so far.

Given that the aim for this year was merely to close the gap and re-establish itself in the midfield, Briatore’s latest stated aims as of the Chinese Grand Prix suggest Alpine is even outperforming its own expectations.

“To finish in front of [Audi], if it is possible [and] close to [Red Bull], if it’s possible!” Briatore said of the team’s mindset for the year.

“This is what we’re looking for. We’re looking to be P7, P8, P6, this range, this range of the competition we have. We have the top four teams, they are very, very strong, and after that is all the rest. So fighting to be in front of all the rest.”

A major hurdle at the start of this season has been in developing an understanding – and fast – of the Mercedes power unit, which Nielsen said was progressing well, while upgrades introduced in Japan were the first step in development aimed at curbing what he believes to be the next area of concentration to unlock further performance on the aero side.

“High-speed changes in direction, that’s probably the biggest single weakness on the car we’ve got this year,” Nielsen said in Japan.

“So we knew coming here, Sector One would be tricky, and it is. It manifests itself as understeer. So we have high-speed understeer. We saw some of that in Bahrain.

“I think that’s the biggest overriding factor, honestly. Other than that, everything’s pretty good, as I say, long runs, high fuel, looks good, looks competitive compared with the people that we’re up against.”

The updates introduced in Japan saw a redesigned front deflector to ensure a more consistent delivery of performance, while rear wing changes were made to introduce a revised endplate to improve local downforce loading and airflow conditioning.

The changes saw Alpine put in its most assured race of the three so far, with Gasly storming to a sixth-place finish from his seventh-place grid slot. Fortune or circumstances weren’t needed for this result; Gasly genuinely had the pace to hold off a car that, 12 months ago, he would have been lapped by.

Far from being frightened off the road with Max Verstappen right behind him, Gasly used all his experience to hold off his former Red Bull teammate lap after lap. It led the Dutch driver to point out Gasly’s speed after the chequered flag, confirming that he had thrown every weapon in his arsenal at him, but Gasly didn’t cave under the pressure.

It was perhaps indicative of the confidence building within himself and within Alpine that this is no longer a backmarker team, and the fact that the A526 even appears to have the legs on Red Bull’s RB22 at present is vindication that the decision to switch priorities last year was the correct one.

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Having put in two strong weekends in a row, Briatore said this shows that Alpine, at the start of a long year of development, is keeping pace with one of the usual frontrunning teams and has leapt ahead of many of its expected midfield rivals.

“To repeat it at a different track configuration like Suzuka, confirms the gains we made in Shanghai and shows we’re in the mix with Red Bull as the fourth quickest car currently,” he said.

“Pierre drove a fantastic race again and extremely well under pressure to keep Max [Verstappen] behind him for more than 25 laps.”

Inevitably, the resources at Red Bull’s disposal might mean that Alpine eventually might be overtaken by Red Bull in the development race, but, looking backward, there are no obvious candidates who can be earmarked as potential disruptors.

It’s a markedly different team that’s shown up for 2026, with a clear step forward having been made – can this momentum be kept up to eventually return Enstone to winning ways? If it can, Nielsen doesn’t want to put a timeline on it.

“I’m not a person who believes in a 100-race plan or a three-year plan or a five-year plan,” he said at the tail end of 2025.

“I believe you put the best people you can get in the right positions, you give a clear mission, get the army marching all in the same direction, and you just work as hard as you can to do the best job you can.

“You mill away at it. It’s a slow, grinding process, and you hope, eventually, you do a better job than everybody else.

“I can tell you we’re building a better car next year [for 2026] than we have [in 2025]. I can’t tell you whether that will line up on the grid in first or 10th through 20th.

“I’m confident we’ve made a step. All I know is we’re doing the best we can, and we’re improving our structure.

“We’re recruiting in the areas where we’re weak, and we’ll just start that grinding process now. You can’t turn these things around in a few months or even a year.

“I was here when Renault bought Benetton the first time around. It took us three years to win a race and five years to win the championship. That metric doesn’t necessarily hold true today. It might be shorter, might be longer. You just do the best you can.”

With Williams and Aston Martin having dropped the ball for this year, Alpine’s nearest rivals now appear to be other customer outfits, such as Haas and Racing Bulls. All three teams appear to be relatively similar in performance at present, but the fact that the Mercedes power unit appears to be the class of the field could be a defining factor in this particular battle.

“I’m just happy because the car seems to work on all types of tracks, really,” Gasly said after Japan.

“So I think that’s definitely a good boost of confidence. I haven’t been at the factory yet, but hopefully they’ll enjoy seeing us fighting for this type of position, quite different from last year, and take the boost.”

The main question mark for Alpine at this point is whether or not it can keep pace with development, and whether the A526 is a good, if unspectacular, car being flattered by a superior power unit, as was the case with Williams at the start of the hybrid era.

Even if that is the case, the renewed optimism and vigour that the obvious step forward has brought will only serve to light a fire under a squad that may have let its head drop under the previous regulation cycle, particularly following the news about Viry.

“With the short break, we absolutely won’t stand still,” Briatore said after Japan. “We will be working hard at Enstone to add more performance to the car and continue to give equal opportunity to both drivers to perform and score points.”

Being ahead of Red Bull is no easy feat and, yet, the slowest team of 2025 has achieved just that.

Alpine rating: 7.5/10

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