Pierre Gasly gleefully welcomed his first Formula 1 points since the summer break at the Brazil Grand Prix - but is at a loss to explain Alpine’s upturn in form.
Prior to last weekend’s Sao Paulo round, Alpine had been enduring its worst results since the Enstone-based outfit was founded in the 1980s, with the previous five grands prix providing a high of 15th, courtesy of Gasly in Mexico.
The poor performance was down to Alpine stopping development of its A525 early in the season to focus on F1’s new 2026 regulations. Yet, against all expectations, Gasly qualified eighth for the Interlagos sprint, in which he maintained that position and scored the last available point.
“For me it was night and day with what I felt since three months,” the Frenchman pondered on Sunday evening. “I'll take it, and I must say it put a bigger smile on my face this morning, waking up – knowing that I had a car to race.”
Gasly then took ninth place on the grid for the main race and secured 10th on Sunday amid a 10-way scrap from seventh to 16th.
“Very happy, because last time we scored points on a Sunday was in Spa before the summer break, and it's been a very long walk in the middle of nowhere for three months.
“If I've got to be honest, I'm a little disappointed with today because we took a great start, managed to pass Bearman and managed to pass Russell,” the Alpine driver added, though his move on Russell didn’t stick.
“Both occasions I'm losing the position in the straights, which would have put us in a much better track position for the rest of the race. Managed to dive twice in the inside of Hadjar, but every time in the straight to Turn 4 then he gets past me very easily, so I feel like I had quite a lot more pace. Just not really able to fully show it.
“At the end it's one point and I'm definitely not going to complain about it, because I would have taken it every single day since three months. I'm sure we'll have a look if we could have done anything different, but I do feel we had more pace than we were able to show.”
Alpine’s A525 seemingly made a step forward in terms of not just performance but also behaviour.
“I was able to drive in a way that I want,” Gasly pointed out. “The car was responding to what I expect the car to do, and we had a lot more potential.
“In quali yesterday, to be less than five tenths from the McLaren, knowing the package we have, it just showed there was something. We were actually very competitive in the corners, and I was pleased the car was responding to my input and there was nothing really very strange. It's what I expect from a race car.
“Most important from the weekend – obviously one point is not going to change my life, neither the life of the team, but I think it's just important in the bigger picture to understand where that entire potential came from and where it was the last few weekends. For sure it must be track-characteristic as well, but there is more to it I think, which we need to analyse.”
Asked whether Alpine could carry this momentum in the last three grands prix of the season, starting with Las Vegas next week, Gasly said: “I have no idea. We have no idea why we're fast here and we have no idea why we're so slow in Mexico. I mean, we do have small ideas, but not enough to say that's going to be fine.
“Last year I qualified third in Vegas. We'll see. I will not put money on third for me in Vegas this year. Max was nowhere yesterday, today he was third. Usually we're nowhere and [in Brazil] we were strong the whole weekend. It's quite a few things to work on.”
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