Formula One in 2026 has been dominated by the Mercedes duo of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell.

Ollie Bearman’s excellent start to the season has also generated plenty of admiring looks his way.

Alpine’s Pierre Gasly is currently eighth in the Drivers’ Championship after scoring points in all three Grands Prix this season, and along with Bearman has been the clear early leader of Formula One’s midfield.

That represents real progress for what was F1’s worst team last season and Gasly has scored all but one of the team’s points, with Franco Colapinto’s tenth place in China the Argentine’s sole contribution to the cause so far.

Painful Decisions Pay Off

Alpine’s start to the season has two key factors behind it, as the Renault owned team voluntarily gave up their works team status to become a Mercedes customer for 2026, making that decision late in 2024 in a decision driven by the returning Flavio Briatore.

While that left them having to fit their car design around someone else’s engine, Mercedes even a year out from the start of the season were thought to be the strongest engine manufacturer for the new for ’26 Power Unit Regulations.

That has proven true, and the team have gone from having the worst Power Unit for much of the last decade to the best.

The other factor is a more painful decision made at the start of last season, when the team made the decision to stop development of their already weak 2025 car early, a decision at the time that left Alpine optimistic.

The only major development was an upgrade brought to the Spanish Grand Prix in June.

Gasly scored all the team’s points in 2025 but scored just two of his 22 points in the second half of the season to finish 18^th in the standings, but his work behind the scenes in rallying the team was important for morale ahead of a 2026 in which the team were targeting heading up the midfield.

2026 so far

After a strong winter testing programme that left observers putting Alpine towards the top of the midfield and the third strongest Mercedes team ahead of Williams, hopes in the team were high going into the Australian Grand Prix.

Gasly once again asserted himself as the team’s leader and despite a tougher than expected weekend in Melbourne, delivered a point for tenth position following a battle with arch-rival Esteban Ocon.

The team was in much better form in China, with Gasly an impressive seventh in Sprint Qualifying before strategy in the Sprint Race dropped him to tenth and the Frenchman failed to score.

He was similarly impressive after the Sprint to outqualify the Red Bull of Max Verstappen in seventh, while a delay in the pits during the Chinese Grand Prix in the Safety Car period and brief troubles at the restart prevented him taking fifth from Bearman, and he ended up sixth.

While Colapinto was on for good points himself before being clattered by Ocon’s Haas, the Argentine managed tenth place in the race to break his own duck with the team, even if he remained a step behind the impressive Frenchman.

Gasly would repeat that qualifying performance in Japan at Suzuka with another fine seventh place, and he would again hold off Verstappen – this time a race long scrap for seventh place as the best of the rest behind the top three teams Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren.

This leaves Gasly on 17 points, only two fewer than the first 13 races of last season but more impressive is that he has not left anything on the table.

Alpine were on their back foot in Melbourne where he salvaged that point having started 14^th, while he maximised his result in Japan and missing out on fifth in China was not due to the driver.

He has an average qualifying advantage over Colapinto of 0.699s from the first four sessions of 2026 after last season’s dominance over the Argentine and has taken on the mantle of team leader having unseated Ocon in 2024.

A contract extension until the end of 2028 is a vote of confidence from both parties, and in the signings of experienced F1 operator Steve Nielsen as Team Principal and David Sanchez as Technical Director following stints with Ferrari and McLaren, the team finally look to have settled down behind the scenes following several seasons of chaos.

Should Alpine continue to deliver on their promise for 2026 and beyond, this partnership may finally bear fruit.

 

Image: Pirelli F1 Media