Alpine left Spa-Francorchamps still leading the extremely tight midfield battle, but the feeling within the French team is far from positive: one point is not much.
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Thanks to the point scored by Franco Colapinto, the Enstone team maintained its lead over Racing Bulls in the constructors’ championship.
Both teams now have 61 points, but the Alpine drivers believe their car no longer has the pace to compete with its main rivals.
Colapinto maximizes the result
The point scored by the Argentinian is above all the result of a perfectly executed race. After an excellent first lap, Colapinto then resisted pressure throughout the event. Even though he finished behind Gabriel Bortoleto and Arvid Lindblad, he managed to hold off Liam Lawson, thus preventing Racing Bulls from placing both their cars in the points.
At the finish, the gaps were tiny : Colapinto crossed the line less than a second ahead of his teammate Pierre Gasly and only 1″4 ahead of Lawson.
For the young driver, this result even exceeds the team’s expectations: « I am obviously happy with this point. We are currently experiencing some difficulties with the car, so managing to score in these conditions and finish ahead of an Audi and a Racing Bulls, it’s probably more than we thought we could do. »
But the Argentinian is not deluding himself. According to him, Alpine is now suffering from a clear performance deficit: « We need to improve the car enormously. Right now, we are too slow. We maximized the weekend thanks to good qualifying and a good race, but we clearly lack speed. We are losing a lot of time in certain corners compared to the Audis and Racing Bulls. »
Gasly: « It’s not enough »
Pierre Gasly’s weekend was much more complicated. After his accident during Friday’s free practice, the Frenchman saw his race disrupted from the formation lap due to a technical problem that deprived him of power.
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« It started badly, he regrets. I had no power at the start of the formation lap and lost two positions. I managed to come back, but a botched pit stop made us lose ground again. »
The rest of the race came down to a long battle with Liam Lawson, without ever really being able to climb back into the points: « It was a very frustrating race. I was stuck behind Liam for a long time. We overtook each other several times, but in the end, we finished just outside the points, which is disappointing. »
The Frenchman is particularly concerned about the gap to direct competitors: « When you look at the gap to the cars in front of us, the Audis, Bortoleto or Lindblad, we are very far behind. We absolutely must make progress. »
Hungary as hope
This underperformance confirms a more difficult period for Gasly. After scoring points in the first seven Grands Prix of the season, he has only scored one point in the last three weekends.
With Racing Bulls now level in the championship, Alpine knows it won’t be able to maintain its midfield position solely through perfect race execution. The team is now eagerly awaiting the arrival of new technical developments.
Meanwhile, Franco Colapinto hopes that the slower, twistier Hungaroring track will be more suited to the characteristics of the A526. One thing is certain: after Spa, both drivers are unanimous. To stay ahead of their rivals, Alpine will quickly need a more performing car.
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