BWT Alpine Formula One Team – Pierre Gasly delivers P7 in Suzuka qualifying, Franco Colapinto stops short in Q2

BWT Alpine Formula One Team turned things around at the right moment. Struggling and lacking clear direction during Free Practice 3, the French outfit managed to bring the A526 back into its operating window for qualifying. Pierre Gasly capitalised with a well-built 7th place, right in the middle of an ultra-tight midfield.

Franco Colapinto, however, failed to match that progression and was eliminated in Q2, finishing 15th.

BWT Alpine Formula One Team: a strong response in qualifying

Saturday didn’t start well.
An imprecise car, lacking stability through high-speed sequences, and lap times off the pace: P10 for Pierre Gasly, P17 for Franco Colapinto. At Suzuka, that kind of baseline leaves no margin.

Between FP3 and qualifying, Alpine went back to basics. Work on balance, targeted aerodynamic adjustments, and optimisation of the tyre operating window. Nothing spectacular on paper, but a clear direction — and it showed immediately on track.

Pierre Gasly set the tone in Q1 (1:30.584), confirmed in Q2 (1:29.874), then extracted the maximum in Q3 with a 1:29.691 lap, securing 7th place. A clean, controlled progression — no overdriving, just making full use of a car that finally became predictable.

In a compressed midfield — just over one second separating P7 from P17 — this level of execution makes all the difference. Alpine doesn’t dominate the midfield, but positions itself with precision.

The key lies in sector 3. With 2026 ERS constraints, super clipping heavily impacts speed between 130R and the chicane. On that front, the Alpine A526 performs well. Pierre Gasly managed to retain more speed than several direct rivals, securing his lap times and stabilising braking phases.

By contrast, Franco Colapinto never quite reached that level of performance.

His Q1 was solid (1:30.931), but Q2 lacked progression (1:30.627). The same issue persisted: difficulty rotating the car through high-speed corners, particularly in sector 1 and at Spoon. Where Gasly leaned on the front end despite its limitations, Colapinto remained on the back foot and couldn’t piece together a full lap.

This qualifying session confirms a clear trend: the A526 is competitive, but demanding.

When the balance is right, it delivers solid top-10 potential. Pierre Gasly proved it with a third consecutive Q3 appearance, establishing Alpine as a reference in the midfield ahead of Racing Bulls, Audi and Williams. But the margin remains tight.

The understeer in high-speed corners hasn’t disappeared. The updated front deflector brings gains, but doesn’t fully solve the lack of rotation. At Suzuka, that immediately costs time through the Esses and Spoon.

What makes the difference for now is energy management.
The A526 uses its ERS efficiently, particularly in critical clipping zones. It’s not a dominant advantage, but enough to edge ahead of direct rivals.

With this 7th place, BWT Alpine Formula One Team has a solid foundation for the race. But nothing is guaranteed. The gaps behind are minimal and the pressure constant. Starts, restarts, tyre management — everything will need to be executed perfectly.

The encouraging sign remains race pace observed on Friday, more consistent than over a single lap. If that holds, points are within reach.

For Franco Colapinto, the target is clear: rely on that long-run pace to move forward. At Suzuka, the order remains fragile. Alpine has put itself in position — now it has to convert.

Pierre Gasly (7th in qualifying):

“I’m extremely happy with this seventh place in qualifying today. The team did an excellent job finding more performance, so a big thank you to everyone for their efforts. Yesterday, I wasn’t feeling very comfortable and couldn’t drive the way I wanted, so we clearly had a lot to analyse.

We made good changes and the feeling was much better in Free Practice 3. We made a few additional adjustments before qualifying and the car delivered its best behaviour of the weekend, which is very satisfying. I think this result was the best we could achieve given the level of the top three teams. Being close to a Ferrari is a great collective effort.

Tomorrow, it will be a challenge to keep this seventh place with several fast cars behind us. Our goal is to make the most of our grid position with a strong start and good restarts. Our pace with high fuel looked decent on Friday, so I hope we can fight for strong points again.”

Franco Colapinto (15th in qualifying):

“This is not the result we were hoping for heading into qualifying. Overall, we are lacking pace on low fuel this weekend. The car feels better and is much more competitive with high fuel, which is encouraging for tomorrow.

It was better in Q1, but we didn’t make the step forward needed in Q2 to reach Q3. As Pierre showed, we didn’t extract the full potential of the car. With these cars, you really need to be in the right window on every detail, and that wasn’t the case for us.

I need to work with the team to better understand certain things and see where we can improve. It’s my first time driving here. It’s a great track, but also very technical, so there are clearly areas where we still need to improve. Yesterday, race pace looked more competitive, so if we can maintain that, I hope we can move up the order tomorrow.”

Steve Nielsen:

“We are still learning a lot about these new cars and we approached this weekend with realistic expectations after the positive result in China. Suzuka is a completely different challenge from Shanghai, or even Melbourne.

We were therefore cautious about our level of performance and wanted to wait for qualifying for confirmation. What is really encouraging is that we repeated our qualifying result with another seventh place for Pierre.

Qualifying doesn’t bring points, but it reinforces the idea that we have a competitive package across different types of circuits. Once again, Pierre delivered a very strong performance and showed how quickly he has adapted to these demanding new cars.

On Franco’s side, he didn’t make the same step between sessions and was eliminated in Q2. The whole team will work hard to understand why the pace wasn’t there and help him close the gap.

On Friday, our high-fuel runs showed we were competitive, so we hope to be in the fight for points with both cars tomorrow. We know the race will be long and reliability is key at this stage of the season. We will stay fully focused on our objective to add more points before the spring break.”

Performance Table – BWT Alpine Formula One Team

After a difficult baseline in FP3, the step forward in qualifying puts Alpine back in the fight for points.

Source: BWT Alpine Formula One Team