Eighth place in Canada continues a welcome trend for Pierre Gasly and the Alpine Formula 1 team, which took a huge step forward in 2026.
But, in a race marked by high attrition, the Frenchman’s latest points finish did mask that the underlying issues that have hampered him over the past two weekends are still present.
Gasly has been one of the standout performers of the opening rounds of 2026, but took a notable step backwards in Miami and Montreal as Alpine brought upgrades to the A526.
Gasly was outqualified by team-mate Franco Colapinto for four consecutive qualifying sessions across both sprint weekends after reporting a mysterious change to the behaviour of his car.
“It’s [been] the same thing since the first lap in practice in Miami,” Gasly said on Sunday night. “We see it on data, we’re pretty clear on what’s happening and we’ve just got to understand exactly where it comes from, and it’s going to be part of the work we’ll have to do ahead of Monaco.”
Gasly doesn’t feel the same level of confidence in the A526 in low-speed traction, making it harder to drive the car on the limit.
After a disastrous sprint qualifying session, in which Gasly qualified in 19th, Alpine took his car out of parc ferme to try various set-up changes. It also started a process of elimination to get to the bottom of the root cause, with Gasly even going back to an older floor.
Pierre Gasly, Alpine
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Quite how far Gasly could have come in grand prix qualifying is not entirely clear, as he hit a groundhog in Q1 which left him with damage that saw him eliminated in Q2, while Colapinto advanced to Q3. That also explained why he and his team didn’t make a big deal out of being impeded by Lewis Hamilton, which may have saved the Ferrari driver from a grid penalty.
Alpine’s aerodynamic upgrades appear to work as expected, as can be seen across the garage where a more confident Colapinto has been thriving since Miami, but it also hasn’t been ruled out that they have somehow changed something in the behaviour that Gasly hasn’t enjoyed.
“We’ve made a few tweaks with our upgrades since Miami which make them work now, so I think we’re pretty happy with that,” he said, “On my side we’ve tested quite a lot of things, parts-wise in the sprint, and also again today I was running the older floor.
“As a team, we’ve got a good understanding coming out of the weekend and we can exclude the parts, but they still will be important to analyse deeper and understand, once the car gets back at the factory, how to get that performance back.”
With its stop-start nature and its many chicanes leading onto straights, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is probably one of the worst tracks for Gasly’s specific car weakness. And in Sunday’s cold Canadian Grand Prix he was also struggling in the opening stages of the race to bring his medium tyres up to temperature and stick with the group ahead of him.
But it being a traction problem goes some way towards explaining why it especially rears its head in qualifying when the Frenchman has to wring the most lap time out of the car on the limit, but why he could still deliver a strong enough race on Sunday, which he considered “good damage limitation”.
Gabriel Bortoleto, Audi F1 Team, Pierre Gasly, Alpine
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
Alpine’s managing director Steve Nielsen vowed the team would continue digging into Gasly’s woes but praised the Enstone squad for not panicking and grinding away throughout the weekend to get a result on the board.
“Pierre has not been happy with the balance of the car all weekend,” Nielsen told Autosport on Sunday night. “He was lacking some downforce compared to the other car. We don’t really know why, but that seemed to go away in the race, so I think we really need to look at the details and work out what happened. But the team didn’t panic, worked away at it, and the result came.”
When asked if he felt there was a fundamental issue with his car, Gasly said: “I think it’s not as straightforward. At the moment I can just feel what I feel and we can just see on the data what we see in terms of difference.
“Whether it’s a component or whether it’s something else set-up-wise, it’s a very small difference which doesn’t explain the difference we’re seeing, so I don’t think it’s set-up. It can be many things, that’s why I think we need more days and we need to get back to the factory, get the car back and just understand a bit more from it.
“There is performance but since Miami my traction potential has clearly changed, and we need to get it back to where it was.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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