Alpine 2026 half-season report: progress made, momentum lost

Alpine’s season so far: progress with a warning attached

On the face of it, Alpine’s progress from last season to this one deserves recognition. The team has already nearly tripled its points total from 2025, when it finished at the bottom of the standings, and it remains locked in the fight with Racing Bulls to be crowned the best of the rest.

The team began the year as a consistent points scorer and held a strong position in fifth place in the championship. That advantage has since disappeared. Racing Bulls has surged forward with effective upgrades, while Alpine has increasingly appeared to be reacting rather than controlling the midfield battle. The result is a campaign that has delivered clear improvement, but also a growing sense that the team must find another level after the summer break.

Best finish: Pierre Gasly, third in Monaco

Midfield podiums are often shaped by circumstances as well as outright pace. Retirements, crashes and other incidents involving drivers further up the order can create an opportunity, but the driver still has to be in position to take it. Pierre Gasly was, and his third place in Monaco ultimately became Alpine’s defining result of the first half of the season.

For Gasly, the Principality is the closest thing to a home race on the current calendar. A podium there would have been a major achievement under any circumstances, although his opportunity to celebrate was delayed when the result was not confirmed until five days later.

Gasly started ninth and used the two Safety Cars and the red flag to climb to fourth. He then gained another position when George Russell served his penalty. However, Alpine had not informed Gasly that he also had two time penalties, which were added to his finishing time and initially dropped him to seventh.

The disappointment was severe, but the story did not end at the chequered flag. Alpine requested a Right of Review, and the request was ultimately deemed successful. Gasly was reinstated to the top three, while Isack Hadjar was required to hand over the trophy.

The result contained an element of fortune, as Gasly himself would acknowledge, but that should not obscure the importance of the performance. Alpine converted an unpredictable race into its best finish of the year, and Gasly remained in the right place to benefit when the opportunity emerged.

The driver comparison

Qualifying: Gasly leads 9–2

Alpine’s search for a long-term team-mate for Gasly has been complicated. In 2025, Jack Doohan was replaced by Franco Colapinto in a move that was initially intended to be part of a rotation. Colapinto’s future with the team was therefore far from certain.

His performances were strong enough to secure his place for this season, and he has taken another clear step forward. Even so, Gasly has established a commanding advantage in qualifying, leading the head-to-head by nine wins to two.

Both drivers made early Q3 appearances. Gasly reached the final qualifying segment in China, Japan, Miami and Monaco, while Colapinto did so in Miami and Canada. However, the positions Alpine drivers had become accustomed to occupying at the lower end of the top 10 have increasingly been taken by Racing Bulls and, on occasion, Audi.

That trend is significant because it shows where Alpine’s single-lap performance currently sits within the midfield. The team has shown enough pace to reach Q3, but not with the regularity needed to maintain control of the battle behind the leading teams.

Race results: Gasly leads 7–4

Gasly’s advantage is smaller in the race head-to-head, where Colapinto has finished ahead on four occasions. The Argentine’s strongest result came in Canada, where he secured a career-best sixth place, although he finished one lap behind the leaders.

Of Alpine’s 61 points, Gasly has scored 42. His campaign also included an impressive run of seven consecutive rounds in the points, a sequence that ended at the Austrian Grand Prix. Gasly described that weekend as “the toughest of the season”, an assessment that underlined the team’s growing difficulty in sustaining its early form.

The comparison between qualifying and race performance offers a clear reading of Alpine’s first half. Gasly has been considerably stronger over one lap, while Colapinto has been more competitive relative to his team-mate on Sundays. More broadly, Alpine’s race pace has generally been stronger than its qualifying speed. That is not necessarily the team’s greatest weakness, given that points are ultimately secured in the race, but it has made recovery drives increasingly important.

Best moment: Monaco and a strong Canadian weekend

There is little doubt what Gasly would nominate as Alpine’s best moment. A first podium since 2024, delivered at the sport’s most iconic circuit and then recovered after an initial classification disappointment, is an obvious candidate.

However, Alpine produced more than one highlight during its strong start to the year. Aside from Monaco, Canada was the team’s best weekend. Colapinto finished sixth and Gasly followed in eighth, giving Alpine one of its four double-points finishes.

That result reflected the team’s ability to produce meaningful race performances even when its qualifying speed was less convincing. Both drivers have delivered notable recovery drives, with Gasly’s rise from 14th to seventh at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix standing out as another example.

These performances formed the foundation of Alpine’s early championship position. The team was not simply relying on one exceptional result; it was collecting points with enough consistency to establish a dominant hold on fifth place. That foundation is why the recent decline feels more serious than an isolated bad weekend: it has interrupted a pattern that appeared to be working.

Worst moment: a package that no longer looked fast enough

Alpine has declined steadily over the most recent rounds. Neither driver scored in Austria or Hungary, where the team lagged behind its rivals. The problem was not limited to the absence of points. Even when Colapinto finished 10th in Belgium, he had too many concerns about Alpine’s current package to enjoy the result.

A points finish that does not prevent a driver from criticising the car is a worrying signal. Colapinto described it as “too slow”, a blunt assessment of Alpine’s competitive position at that stage of the season.

The team left Spa-Francorchamps hoping that the corners of the Hungaroring would suit its car. Instead, Alpine could manage only 12th and 15th. The result suggested that the issue was not confined to one type of circuit, and it deepened the concern that the team’s rivals had found more performance through development.

The most serious incident of the first half came in Miami, where Gasly inadvertently made contact with Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson. The Alpine car flipped into the air before striking the barriers. Gasly was fortunately uninjured, but the crash brought a frightening end to his weekend.

Going forward: Alpine must answer Racing Bulls

After finishing 10th in the 2025 Teams’ Championship, Alpine would have been relieved to emerge as the leading midfield team during the opening rounds of this season. The team had consistent points, relatively content drivers and a substantial advantage in fifth place.

That picture has changed. Racing Bulls has produced a magnificent surge by introducing effective upgrades and converting them into striking results, with Liam Lawson and rookie Arvid Lindblad both making a significant contribution. Alpine knew the threat was developing, but the moment it had been trying to avoid arrived in Hungary: Racing Bulls moved ahead and took fifth place with a six-point advantage.

Alpine has appeared to watch its advantage disappear as the rounds passed. That cannot continue if the team is to reclaim the position. The immediate priority is not merely to improve its points total, but to stop losing ground to a rival that has demonstrated a stronger development curve.

More updates are likely after the summer break for both teams. Alpine’s route back into control is therefore clear, even if executing it will be difficult: unlock more pace, preserve Gasly’s trademark consistency and help Colapinto reach a comparable level of performance.

The broader midfield picture is also worth following, particularly as Racing Bulls’ progress continues to reshape the battle. For further coverage of that team’s rise, read how Racing Bulls is backing Lawson and Lindblad after the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Alpine’s half-term grade is ultimately mixed. The team has made a substantial recovery from last year, secured a memorable podium and built a points total that reflects genuine progress. But the recent results have exposed a loss of momentum, while Racing Bulls has turned a known threat into a championship leader in the midfield fight. The second half of the season will determine whether Alpine’s early progress was the beginning of a sustained rebuild or merely a strong opening phase that its rivals eventually overcame.