‘So far back’: Gasly’s blunt Baku verdict lays bare Alpine’s 2025 reality
Pierre Gasly didn’t try to dress it up. After dragging an Alpine that simply wouldn’t play ball around Baku’s flat‑out straights, he crossed the line among the last classified runners and summed it all up in three words: “We have no pace.”
It was that kind of Sunday for Enstone. On a circuit that exposes horsepower and drag, Alpine’s A525 had neither the speed nor the efficiency to hang on, and both Gasly and Franco Colapinto were the final two to take the flag. The team left Azerbaijan empty‑handed for a fourth consecutive weekend, a trend that’s become a grim through line since the summer.
“We’re so far back, honestly,” Gasly said after finishing 18th. “Obviously we have no pace. It doesn’t make our life very easy. We’ve never really been strong around here, so there’s obviously some stuff we don’t do quite well. The last four or five weekends have been more difficult, so I really want to work with the team to try to get back into a better place. But yeah, this weekend was clearly not good.”
The long straights of Baku were never going to flatter the Renault power unit, and Alpine knew it. But there’s underperformance and then there’s running out of tools to fight with. Right now, it feels like the latter. Development has largely pivoted to 2026, a decision that makes sense in the boardroom yet leaves the race team armed with tweaks rather than silver bullets for the run‑in.
“We just need to analyse everything and try to work things out, but it clearly didn’t work this weekend,” Gasly added. “I know it’s going to be tough [for the rest of the season], that’s why it’s important for me to move on and work with the team on what we can do to improve short term. We’re not gonna go from P19 to suddenly finding five tenths of lap time. We know what works and what doesn’t, but I’m sure there are still things we can do better. Also, on my side, there are things I did — a mistake that I shouldn’t do — so I keep working. But honestly, it’s quite tough when you see the gap with the other cars in front.”
There’s a personal sting in this for Gasly. He’s sitting on 20 points, a total that — if it holds — would mark the lowest season tally of his F1 career, below the 23 he logged in 2022. He banked 42 last year and finished 10th in the standings; that always felt like a realistic watermark for a driver who, on his day, wrings more out of a car than the data suggests is there. This season’s Alpine has tested that to its limits.
It’s not for lack of effort. Gasly’s been the one keeping Alpine on the board for most of 2025, with a gritty run of points earlier in the year before the tap tightened. Since the end of July, the only addition to the team’s tally has been a single, hard‑won point in Belgium. Colapinto, in his first full F1 campaign, continues to search for that first score. He’s shown flashes, but right now there’s precious little margin for inexperienced weekends in a car that gives you very little back.
This is where Alpine finds itself: a proud operation with a clear long‑term pivot, taking short‑term bruises while the rest of the midfield sharpens up. The constructors’ standings don’t lie, and the climb off the bottom looks steeper with each zero. The reality is you can’t “optimize” your way past a straight‑line deficit at venues like Baku; you need grunt or a concept that cheats drag better than the guy next door. Alpine had neither on Sunday.
From the outside, the tone in the garage has shifted from frustration to realism. The team’s 2026 gamble is exactly that — a bet on a regulation reset to compress the order and reset their competitive ceiling. It’s logical. But for drivers, the horizon is always the next corner, and Gasly’s message was as pragmatic as it was weary: keep the head down, keep the car clean, nick whatever’s on the table, and make sure the homework is done for the next one.
There will be tracks ahead that mask the worst of Alpine’s weaknesses and give them a shot at ones and twos. There usually are. But the bigger picture is unavoidable. If Baku was a test of straight‑line mettle and operational grit, Alpine failed the first and could only lean on the second. There’s still a professional pride in turning up, executing, and bagging what you can. Gasly’s been doing that most Sundays. He’ll have to keep doing it for a while yet.
