Alpine's lack of performance over the 2025 season thus far has been put down to its A525 Formula 1 car lacking consistency and tyre management abilities, which now means that the team is 15 points adrift of Sauber at the bottom of the standings.
While this year's car has shown moments of pace in qualifying, leading to Pierre Gasly breaking into Q3 on six occasions so far this year (including a stellar fifth on the grid for Bahrain), the Frenchman has also been dumped out in Q1 four times. The peaks and troughs have been very clearly defined this year.
Austria initially offered one of those peaks as Alpine took to the Alps. Gasly collected 10th in qualifying, made the most of the Turn 3 skirmishes, and found his way up to sixth by the end of the opening lap. It helped that he was on the soft tyres, although the life in the C5s eventually began to leave him and he fell prey to the likes of Alex Albon and Gabriel Bortoleto on the opening stint.
After he'd made his first stop, he reckoned that he'd picked up damage - something that threw the balance of his car for a loop and left him to battle at the wheel while slipping down the order. His team-mate Franco Colapinto also endured a miserable afternoon; he'd got tagged by Yuki Tsunoda at Turn 4 and ended up spinning, then collected a five-second penalty for showing Oscar Piastri the grass when the McLaren driver attempted to lap him. A promising qualifying session proved deceptive.
"We were just nowhere and there wasn't much to do, so we tried to stick on track and every corner was extremely tough. It's unfortunate," Gasly noted.
"At the moment, looking at Sauber, they're extremely competitive. In terms of degradation, I think we are not in the best spot, so when I see some guys doing one stop, it's quite impressive.
"We have to fight with this car; that's the car we've got, and we'll try our best. We put ourselves in the best position after the first lap, in sixth behind George, best of the midfield. We need to try to repeat that, put our elbows out, and try to defend as hard as we can."
Over the past two years, Gasly has been a source of motivational quotes and consistently demonstrates his desire to help the team succeed – but even he must be finding the ordeal testing. Since joining in 2023, he's served under three team principals, a series of different technical leads, two CEOs – and a fourth team principal is expected if Steve Nielsen indeed joins to manage the team.
And, per his comments after Austria, there's no further updates expected before the summer.
There's a lethargy about Alpine as a team, one that has all but extinguished the brighter notes of last year's finale; after Ollie Oakes came in and tapped up the likes of experienced pros like Dave Greenwood to help steady the ship, Alpine looked to be out of the doldrums.
Last year ended very well; David Sanchez's technical team took an overweight car and found a way to make it sing across the final stages of 2024. The Brazil 2-3 was incredibly fortunate, but Gasly at least followed that up with fifth in Las Vegas and seventh at Abu Dhabi to show that the performance gains had stuck around.
But Oakes' sudden departure, and the long-forecast swap between Jack Doohan and Colapinto, changed the outward dynamic somewhat. For all of the discussion about Flavio Briatore's third tenure at the team across various guises, it feels like there's something missing.
It would be almost intangible, if that missing ingredient wasn't on show at other teams on the grid. Alpine has long occupied a niche within the midfield; during its most recent Renault days, the team acted as the bridge between the Mercedes-Ferrari-Red Bull triumvirate at the top, and the midfield runners. But it's fallen since then; persistent managerial changes and an apparent lack of ambition has precipitated its drop.
That midfield position has been challenged by Williams and Sauber, to the point where Alpine sits last in the constructors' standings. Both teams have that missing ingredient, that invigorating presence of a new team management structure that operates with a clear plan and vision.
Where's the five-year plan?
Alpine operated with a long-term goal (win in 100 races, five-year-plan, etc), but with no real guarantees of how it would get there. Now? It doesn't appear to have much of a goal at all – it very much feels ripe for a sale, although that notion has been dismissed out of hand on multiple occasions.
If Nielsen is the pick to manage the team, then he needs to come in with a long-term vision. At Williams, James Vowles studied the factory and found it quite easy to pick out the key strands where investment was needed. At Sauber, Mattia Binotto lit a fire underneath a team that was effectively on tick-over until 2026, and the addition of Jonathan Wheatley has helped to galvanise the Swiss team too.
While the Enstone team has received outside investment, this needs to be directed towards the technical heart of the operation. Dropping the Renault powertrain for Mercedes might bring some performance, but this cannot be the entire gameplan here; adding extra power or efficiency will help, but it's not the sort of thing that turns around an inconsistent car with poor tyre management.
It puts one in mind of McLaren, which found its technical operations were severely behind the times when it switched from Honda to Renault power for 2018; years of blaming an unreliable powertrain proved hubristic, but the shock ultimately helped the team chart its destination for the following years.
Alpine has the potential to do the same, but only under the aegis of a canny operator who understands the rigours of Formula 1. And, ultimately, they have to be given a few years to do so – not 18 months, or whatever the going rate is for a typical Alpine tenure.
Then there's the driving force. Gasly's stock remains high, but the second car has been almost a non-entity this season; Doohan showed flashes of pace but never did so consistently, while Colapinto has faced effectively the same struggles. Qualifying has been decent, sometimes, but the points are proving elusive come Sunday.
Whether that's a fault of the car or simply through inexperience, it's telling that Alpine is already looking at the 2026 market. Valtteri Bottas has had an approach, while Sergio Perez may also be on Briatore's shopping list. Experience, here, is being prioritised with the view to helping the team clear its current malaise.
Either way, Alpine has to follow this simple tenet: make a (good) plan and stick to it.
