Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was glad to be able to maximise the potential of his A526 at the 2026 F1 United States GP, as he managed to secure P10 at COTA on Sunday
An eventful 2026 F1 United States GP for Gasly
The Frenchman’s outing had begun with smooth sailing on Friday. While he didn’t anticipate a lot of performance out of his A526 following a best finish of P12 in FP2, Saturday had in store some relatively promising performance, as the former AlphaTauri driver secured a starting position of P11, improved to P10 following Lindblad’s penalty.
Gasly was finally able to return to score points for Alpine F1 at the 2026 United States GP after some challenging races, including a retirement after getting taken out by teammate Colapinto in Baku, and choosing the wrong tyres in the early stages of the Malaysian round.
He admitted P10 was the best possible result on Sunday for the Enstone-based squad. Contact with Ollie Bearman at Turn 13 on Lap 2 did give him very early damage but had enough speed to take P10. The Brit had barged his way through but the Alpine man soon had his spot back as the Haas had even more performance loss.
“I don’t think there was more to get out of today. So, on that front, I think we can be pleased. On the other side, a bit of a shame was the contact with Ollie, because it was a small touch, but it just took quite a big chunk out of our right part of the floor, like on the front of the floor, and then the mid part of it. So, we were down, close to 10 points, so it didn’t really make our afternoon very easy.”
While the collision hampered Gasly, it did not ruin his day
While the Brit received a ten-second time penalty for the collision and suffered damage to such a severe extent that he was forced to retire, Pierre Gasly ultimately was able to hold on to his starting P10, albeit with a good chunk of the floor lost.
All in all, the experienced driver reckoned that diving further into the top ten after the contact was not possible on that occasion, but that his car definitely could have given Liam Lawson a challenge.
“Pleased. Considering that we were tenth, I would have liked to see what would have been possible against Liam without that damage, but we’ll never know.”
Gasly detailed the outcomes of his collision with Bearman, explaining having less load and performance, whilst conceding that it wasn’t as extensive as he had feared at first.
“Honestly, it wasn’t outrageous. So, I think it’s just like total grip we were lacking. But, I mean, we could see we were down on load, which is never ideal. So, yeah, considering that, we can be pleased to actually gain a point.”
Performance better in the cooler conditions: Pierre Gasly
The final question of the day concerned the pace of his A526 F1 package. The former race winner and multi-time podium sitter explained that the car worked better in the cooler conditions.
In Malaysia and Singapore, they struggled for grip and pace on the Sunday’s with the heat and humidity.
“The fact that it was really cloudy today kind of helped. It was a bit colder than the last couple of days. So yeah, all in all, we had a good surprise in terms of deg. Still, probably not quite as good as the others, but still it wasn’t the trickiest one.”
