Alpine displayed good pace in Miami, and Pierre Gasly hopes this Alpine pace carries over from F1 Miami GP to Canada.
The French outfit toppled the other midfield teams last time out. Alpine had a very upgrade-heavy weekend in Florida and made a pace jump that they team hoped.
Quite a few teams brought a raft of upgrades for the Miami GP weekend. Alpine too introduced six performance specific upgrades including a revised front corner, updated nose camera mounts, reprofiled rear suspension, a modified rear impact structure, and a new rear wing with redesigned endplates.The lap time data suggests that these heap of upgrades did their job.
Alpine were comfortably the fifth fastest team behind the top four F1 teams and well ahead of their nearest rivals Williams. The results, however, were split down the middle for the Enstone-based team. Franco Colapinto crossed the line eighth before being promoted to seventh following a post-race penalty for Charles Leclerc.
Gasly, meanwhile, had qualified tenth and was showing early promise before contact with Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls car at Turn 17 on lap 4 sent him into the barriers. The car flipped on impact. However, Alpine’s pace was impressive.
Gasly hopes that the newfound pace continues in Canada
While Gasly left Sunday pointless, he bagged a Sprint point finishing eighth. Speaking after the race weekend in the print media pen, Gasly admitted even Alpine had not anticipated such a strong showing in Miami.
“Obviously, I hope that it’s going to be the same in Canada. I think this weekend seems to be surprisingly good on our side compared to the rest of the midfield. Hopefully, it’s not track specific.
“I think there will be more work to do over the next two weeks. That’s why I think it was quite important to capitalise on this good form. Now we’ve just got to work and make sure we still have the pace advantage going into Canada.”
The team made a double Q3 appearance that weekend. Despite Gasly’s retirement, Colapinto’s performance showed that the A526 has good potential to stay at the top of the midfield. He believed that he had a “perfect weekend.”
Gasly believes the wider field spread as a factor behind Alpine’s unexpected competitiveness
The Enstone ran more than four tenths of a second per lap quicker than their nearest midfield competitors, with only the leading teams comfortably ahead. While every team have upgraded their car, the difference in the spread meant that Alpine could leapfrog their nearest rivals.
Gasly too pointed at field spread being wider could be one of the factors for their sudden leap in pace. However, he still believes that he is lagging a couple of tenths due to the traction issues.
He said:
“I think the field is just slightly more spread than we thought.
“The gaps probably with the cars ahead were a bit bigger. I think on my side, there are three or four tenths we need to find. Just understanding the struggles I’ve had with the traction.
“But the cars behind me clearly seem to have taken a step back in terms of pace compared to us. Still, I’d rather be in this position going into Canada. We just need to make sure we keep that advantage.”
Alpine now sit fifth in the charts. The upcoming F1 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal will now provide a clearer indication of whether Miami represented a genuine step forward or a circuit-specific surge in form. Alpine and Pierre Gasly will be hoping that their Miami GP momentum carries over to Montreal.
