Alpine’s Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly endured a difficult 2026 F1 São Paulo GP, with both drivers struggling for grip on the intermediate tyres and ultimately finished outside the points.
After failing to progress to the second part of Qualifying, Colapinto and Gasly lined up on the eighth row of the grid in P15 and P16, respectively. A slow start off the line saw both drivers lose several positions off the line and left them with an uphill battle. However, a lack of pace ultimately saw Colapinto and Gasly finish the race in P13 and P14, respectively.
Speaking in the print media zone after the race, Colapinto and Gasly reflected on their weekend at Interlagos, highlighting several issues Alpine needs to address heading into the final rounds of the season and beyond.
Gasly: Alpine are “struggling with some very odd stuff”
The weekend brought challenging weather conditions, with both Qualifying and the race taking place in the wet. Gasly admitted that the team had identified a concerning issue in the data and even considered starting from the pit lane.
While the Frenchman believes Alpine faces a fundamental issue with the car’s performance in wet conditions, he took positives away from their pace in the dry.
“Yeah, I mean, Max and Lewis. Seems like we’re racing in a different league at the moment. So I mean, we’re struggling with some very odd stuff on the car. Yesterday we found a lot of signs of NLC aerodynamics in the car. It was doing some very odd stuff in the wet. And yeah, we were wondering starting from the pit lane and changing our rear wing,” Gasly said.
“At the end it was drying, so we took the gamble to do it, but it just feels like something is not right on the car, it’s broken, whenever it starts raining. So first stint was full. When it’s dry, I feel like some of the dry lap times were fine, were quite competitive. But then eventually, when it started raining again, it was very bad.
“So, we’ll analyse that at the end of the race. I don’t know exactly when it started, but my throttle was stuck as well, like the car wasn’t slowing down. It’s just quite a lot of things we need to have a look at.”
Inters had “extremely poor grip” says Gasly
Gasly was also involved in an incident with Alex Albon, who received a five-second time penalty and two penalty points for rejoining the track unsafely.
Reflecting on the incident, he said: “No, I mean, he [Albon] lost it, went off the track. He was supposed to come back quite safely on track, and as I was arriving, he just closed the door, trying to keep his position, so I had to slam the brake in Turn 3, which was a high-speed corner, not great, but one of the situations in this tricky condition.”
The Frenchman was vocal about the performance of the intermediate tyres and described it as “ice driving”. Unsure whether other drivers shared the same concerns, Gasly acknowledged that Alpine would need to look into the reasons behind their struggles.
“Generally, I must say they feel very poor, the grip, I don’t know if it’s only with our car but to the inters we’ve used to have in the previous years, it just feels like they’re nowhere,” Gasly said.
“Extremely poor grip, the last stint felt like I was driving on ice, I was doing ice driving. I want to review exactly what happened with our car, I don’t know if it was the case for everyone, but generally not a very good tyre.
“I need to look into it with the guys. It just feels, as soon as you brake, you slide the rear, and then most of the corners I’m doing opposite locks, so I’m not really sure what’s going on.”
Looking ahead to Las Vegas, Gasly remains optimistic about Alpine’s chances of returning to the points.
“Well, we have a good record there, so hopefully we’re going to keep it well,” he said.
Colapinto: “It didn’t come together in the wet”
The Argentine admitted that a poor start compromised his race, leaving him struggling to recover positions. Like Gasly, Colapinto also took positives from the team’s pace in dry conditions but acknowledged that Alpine still has work to do to understand its struggles in the wet.
“It was a tough race, I think overall we tried everything we could. The bad start, I think, really compromised the race. We were stuck there, out of the box and did not go forwards and lost a lot of places. And then it was tricky to recover in the wet, you know.
“It was drying, then it really dried the dry line, but offline was really wet. Tricky to overtake, we had a lot more pace than Alex and Charles, but they went by and tried. But then it was very slippery offline. Yeah, then nice defending, did my best.”
He added: “But just in general, it didn’t come together in the wet. The intermediate and extreme wets were not quick enough. We had no grip and no balance. We need to understand why that happened. But in general, in the dry, we were quick.”
“Glad” to have at least shown a bit of pace
Despite the disappointing result, Colapinto enjoyed the on-track battles, which gave him an opportunity to showcase some of Alpine’s pace and defend his position. While the Argentine acknowledged that the outcome fell short of expectations, he felt the team made the most of their pace.
“No, the fights were really fun. I was glad we at least could show a bit of our pace and defend. And try some things, even with the old tyres, it was alright. Of course, not what we wanted, but it was what we had to do today for the pace where we were.
“It should be good for us, normally it’s cold. We like the cold for our tyres too, because we warm them up a lot,” Colapinto said as he looked ahead to Las Vegas.
“A lot of straight lines are also good for us. Some positive things to look at, I think Alpine in the last few years, Vegas is one of the strong tracks.”
