BWT Alpine Formula One Team: Pierre Gasly takes P7 on China sprint grid

BWT Alpine Formula One Team found the consistency it had lacked just a week earlier.

At the Shanghai International Circuit, where the Sprint format returned at the start of the 2026 season, the French outfit delivered its strongest Friday since the championship opener.

With just one free practice session, barely sixty minutes to understand track evolution, fine-tune the mechanical balance and head straight into Sprint Qualifying, Pierre Gasly extracted the very best from the Alpine A526 to secure an unexpected but fully deserved seventh place, while Franco Colapinto endured a more difficult learning curve on a circuit he was discovering in real conditions.

In Shanghai, the impression left by Alpine stood in sharp contrast to what was seen in Melbourne. This time, the Alpine A526 showed a much more natural ability to operate within its performance window, especially through the medium-speed sections where the Enstone car had previously looked too constrained.

The improvement was clear enough to temporarily put the team back in territory it has long been trying to reclaim: the front row of the midfield behind the four dominant structures.

Friday – Free Practice & Sprint Qualifying

From FP1, Alpine rediscovers a far more coherent working baseline

The opening hour of running was anything but insignificant. On a dry track still lacking rubber, the Enstone engineers focused their work on front-axle response through the long rotation phases, a sensitive point in Shanghai’s opening sector.

Pierre Gasly quickly found a usable balance. Without immediately chasing outright pace, he built his session through several progressive runs before posting a best lap of 1’34’’676, the official tenth-fastest time, 1’’935 adrift of George Russell’s Mercedes. His 28 laps above all validated a car that was more stable under braking than it had been in Australia, with fewer visible corrections in the high-load sections.

Franco Colapinto finished fifteenth in 1’34’’947 after 26 laps, just 0’’271 behind his team-mate, but his session was more eventful. The Argentine spun at Turn 9, without mechanical consequence, before losing valuable time in the fast lane during a brief neutralisation caused by yellow flags. On such a technical circuit, that reduced track time weighed heavily on the rest of his day.

Alpine’s internal order in Free Practice sums up that first reading:

The sector data already confirmed different profiles in lap execution.

Pierre Gasly posted 31’’412 in the first sector, 35’’891 in the second and 27’’373 in the final one, the best third sector among the midfield runners.

Franco Colapinto replied with 31’’684, 36’’112 and then 27’’151, evidence of decent speed in the final part of the lap but a more pronounced deficit through the long-load corners of the middle sector. The 318.4 km/h top speed recorded by Pierre Gasly, inside the global top eight, also validated an efficient aerodynamic setup on the long back straight.

The hierarchy was still open, but one point had already emerged: the Alpine A526 looked far less boxed in by its limits than it had in Melbourne.

BWT Alpine Formula One Team

Pierre Gasly builds his Friday lap by lap on the way to a benchmark SQ3

The Sprint format offers no respite. Hardly have the setup changes been validated than the session flips straight into knockout mode.

At 14:00, Isack Hadjar laid down the opening benchmark in 1’34’’212. Three minutes later, Russell immediately moved to the top in 1’33’’030 and confirmed Mercedes’ superiority from the outset.

Pierre Gasly then went into his first decisive attempt. His 1’33’’970 put him eighth provisionally with a very clean lap, especially through the T1-T3 sequence where the Alpine absorbed the load changes well. Two minutes later, Franco Colapinto secured his passage with a 1’34’’592 that kept him provisionally thirteenth.

SQ1 notably eliminated Carlos Sainz Jr., Fernando Alonso, Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez. SQ2 clearly took Alpine into another dimension.

Charles Leclerc set the benchmark in 1’32’’602. Three minutes later, Russell lowered it to 1’32’’241.

Pierre Gasly responded immediately, setting a 1’33’’405, a gain of 0’’565 over his previous lap. That major step forward came primarily from improved traction out of T16, where the Alpine finally delivered all of its rear load.

Franco Colapinto posted a 1’34’’327, not enough to move up: sixteenth, eliminated 0’’922 behind his team-mate.

The stewards opened an investigation into a potential impeding incident between Pierre Gasly and Max Verstappen at the exit of the final corner. The matter was ultimately closed without a penalty. Then came SQ3, eight minutes, soft tyres, one genuine moment to make it count.

George Russell locked in pole with a 1’31’’520. Three minutes later, Pierre Gasly began his lap: 1’32’’888.

The lap time stood for good. No one on the second run displaced him. At 14:45, confirmation from the stewards came through: no sanction.

The Frenchman’s radio shout — “LET’S GOOOO!” — accompanied Alpine’s best lap of the season so far.

Seventh place puts Alpine ahead of Red Bull

Official Sprint grid:

The sector breakdown of Gasly’s SQ3 lap gives the performance even more weight: 30’’912 in the first sector, 35’’678 in the second and then 26’’298 in the last, the best third sector of anyone outside the very front, with almost three tenths taken out of Verstappen in that final portion alone.

The progression remained perfectly linear: +0’’565 from SQ1 to SQ2, then +0’’517 from SQ2 to SQ3, clear proof that both the mediums and the softs were brought into their window with precision.

An Alpine that finally makes technical sense in Shanghai

The numbers tell the story of clear progress. Pierre Gasly improved in every phase, but above all the Alpine A526 finally offered a clear technical picture.

Dynamically, the car looked far more convincing through the long braking phases, especially ahead of the heavy stops in sector one, where Melbourne had exposed a machine that was too nervous. Traction on corner exit was cleaner too, allowing Pierre Gasly to pick up the throttle earlier without any visible loss of drive. Tyre warm-up was also much better controlled, finally giving Alpine a progressive and usable performance window.

The telemetry data reinforced that reading: in SQ3, Pierre Gasly reached 321.7 km/h in the speed trap, the fourth-highest figure of the session.

Out of T16, the Alpine gained 4 km/h compared with FP1, a sign that traction had been reworked between the two sessions. The theoretical degradation over 19 laps is estimated at 0.18 seconds per lap, slightly better than what Red Bull showed in the long-run simulations. Over the full lap, the front-end balance optimised through the T7-T8-T9 section alone represented close to eight tenths gained compared with the behaviour seen in Melbourne.

For Franco Colapinto, the conclusion was different: the Alpine A526 has potential, but his extraction of one-lap performance remains incomplete, especially through the quick transitions where the Argentine is still building his references.

What they said

Pierre Gasly

“I’m extremely pleased with the result in Sprint Qualifying, especially after a week that did not live up to our expectations in Melbourne.

We found more performance than we had in Australia and took away valuable lessons that we can put to use this weekend. We tried to put everything together and I felt much more comfortable in the car from my very first lap on track.

It is encouraging to be more competitive here, to get through to SQ3 comfortably and to mix it with the four leading teams. I feel good in the car and there is clearly more potential than what we showed last time.

We will try to keep this positive momentum going tomorrow and see if we can bring home some points for the team.”

Franco Colapinto

“It was a difficult day and not the result we were hoping for in Sprint Qualifying. We did not manage to take the step forward needed to fight for a place in SQ3.

In the end, we lacked pace today and we need to understand why. Pierre was quick and did an excellent job. That is positive for the team, which is putting in a huge amount of effort, and it is also encouraging to see that there is more potential in the car. On my side, I need to better understand how to extract it and identify the areas where we can improve.

We will try to learn as much as possible in the Sprint race, see if we can gain a few positions and put those lessons into practice for tomorrow’s Qualifying.”

Alpine moves back into contention, but the Sprint will tell the truth

Friday still offers no points, but it gives BWT Alpine Formula One Team a lever it had not yet found this season: a genuine starting position from which to defend something. With Pierre Gasly seventh on the Sprint grid, the objective becomes concrete: stay inside the top eight over 19 laps and finally turn Saturday morning speed into a points-paying result.

Beyond the raw result, this Friday in Shanghai leaves above all an encouraging feeling. For the first time this season, the A526 demonstrated a consistency and one-lap potential that clearly place Alpine at the head of the midfield.

Pierre Gasly made perfect use of the car’s qualities in an ultra-compressed format, while the team managed to improve quickly despite the very limited time available.

Even if Franco Colapinto delivered a disappointing performance compared with Pierre Gasly, gaps that the Frenchman himself struggles to explain, this Friday still marks a genuine technical and operational step forward. Under the demanding eye of Flavio Briatore, the time granted to the young Argentine to reach his team-mate’s level will in all likelihood be limited.

Now the task is to confirm that pace over a distance, where tyre management and traffic will play a decisive role. The 19-lap Sprint race on Saturday at 10:00 local time will be the first real test.

Source: BWT Alpine Formula One Team