Pierre Gasly has been quietly putting together one of the most efficient seasons in the paddock — not because Alpine has suddenly found a magic bullet, but because it’s executing, finishing and hoovering up what others are leaving on the table.
Including Sprint results, Gasly has scored points at every round so far in 2026. In a year where the sharp end has been punctuated by the occasional “how did that happen?” retirement, that sort of consistency is worth its weight in carbon fibre. And in Gasly’s telling, Alpine’s ability to bank results has had as much to do with keeping its own house in order as it has with capitalising on rivals’ problems.
The slightly awkward subtext is that Gasly doesn’t believe Alpine has actually moved forward in pure pace over the last few weeks — if anything, the opposite. The team’s points run, he suggested, has come with a creeping sense that the gap to the leading group is stretching rather than shrinking, and that reliability elsewhere has helped disguise a performance drop.
It’s a pointed observation given the context: power unit-related retirements have hit Mercedes’ works outfit, with George Russell and Kimi Antonelli both suffering failures in Canada and Barcelona respectively. Among Mercedes customers, McLaren has also been caught out — after a double DNS in China, Lando Norris later lost out to a battery issue in Monaco. Those swings have created openings, and Alpine has been one of the teams best placed to walk through them.
That matters because Alpine’s 2026 project is built around a major identity shift: it’s no longer a factory power unit operation via Renault, instead running as a Mercedes customer. The decision was framed internally around cost and competitiveness, with Mercedes’ long-standing reputation in power units a major factor, even though Renault had already had a 2026 engine programme in motion.
So when the Mercedes power unit has had early-season teething problems — enough for Toto Wolff to commit publicly to a full investigation across the works team and its customers — you can understand why Alpine would be keen to stress what it’s experiencing on the ground.
Gasly didn’t hesitate when asked directly about how the Mercedes package has been for him.
“All I can say is, it’s been perfect so far,” Gasly said. “I can’t really ask for more; I’m very happy with what we’ve got.
“I think [what] we’re doing in terms of reliability, everything is perfect since the start of the year.”
That’s not just polite driver-speak. It’s a statement of value — a reminder that whatever is biting others hasn’t bitten Alpine. Mercedes technical director James Allison has already said the battery issues have been “understood”, while admitting the recent run of retirements has been “very, very painful”. Gasly’s perspective suggests Alpine’s integration and usage window has been clean enough that it’s not paying the same price.
And that’s where this season’s Alpine story gets more interesting than a simple “new engine good” narrative. In the constructors’ order, Alpine has gone from being rooted to the bottom to occupying that slightly backhanded “best of the rest” slot behind Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull. That jump is real. But Gasly is essentially arguing it’s not safe — and it won’t last — if the car’s underlying performance trend isn’t corrected.
There’s also an honesty to the way he frames Alpine’s current points streak: not as proof the package is already where it needs to be, but as proof the team is taking the opportunities it’s being handed. That’s an important distinction in modern F1, where the midfield is often decided by who makes fewer mistakes across a weekend rather than who has the flashiest upgrade.
“Touch wood, it’s going to continue like that, and we’re kind of capitalising on the retirements of other cars,” Gasly said. “But we’ve got to put ourselves on top of that midfield to make sure we get the most out of it and, so far, that’s what we’ve been doing the last few weekends, so I think the team can be pleased.”
Then came the sting in the tail.
“On the flip side, I think the gap with the cars has actually grown since the last few weekends, and we’ve got to definitely find a way to bring more performance, because at the moment we’re just far away from these guys.”
It’s a useful reality check. Reliability is a weapon, but it’s also a temporary mask: as the front-running operations stabilise their own hardware, the “free” points dry up. If Alpine wants 2026 to be more than a story of opportunism — a season built on being the last car running when others fall over — it needs to start closing that gap on merit.
For now, Gasly is doing his part: no drama, no zeroes, just relentless accumulation. In a season where even the biggest teams have been bitten, that might be the most valuable skill set on the grid — right up until the moment the others stop making it so easy.
