Pierre Gasly was pleasantly surprised to walk away with points after the 2026 F1 Barcelona-Catalunya GP. The Alpine driver was not happy after qualifying, but managed to steer his Mercedes-powered A526 to a solid P7, at that time one place ahead of his team mate.
Gasly happy about big points haul
Starting 14th, Gasly had little hope ahead of the race. The car felt difficult to drive, and even in the race the Frenchman struggled with his brakes.
While Racing Bulls and Audi looked far quicker on Saturday, Alpine could keep up in the race. Team orders meant Gasly got ahead, and he showed his strong pace to gap Colapinto. Pitting under the VSC was also huge, getting ahead of Liam Lawson. He had been stuck behind him before that.
“I must say I would have signed it any single day after the quali yesterday. The whole weekend I must say has been very difficult. Even today for me in the car I still struggled a lot with the braking in Turn 1, Turn 4, not being able to brake properly.
“So I think overall the hot conditions, the degradation seemed to go in our favour compared to… I was surprised with Liam having so much deg because on one lap pace they were a lot faster.
“I think we did good with the strategy and at the moment all the stars seem to align for us because we were in the right pack, putting the pressure, decided to stay out, 3-4 laps more, VSC came in, got free air, managed to get a lot more pace.
“So yeah, I must say I can’t be happier than that, and even for the team, P7, P8 is a huge amount of points, a good team to work with Franco [Colapinto] as well.
“I’m very positive.”
Brake issues and other team’s reliability problems no concern for Gasly
When pressed on the braking issues during the Barcelona-Catalunya GP weekend, Gasly said he expects everything to be back to normal at the Red Bull Ring in two weeks.
“Honestly we got the whole team into it, so I think a couple of ideas should be why. Obviously we could not really test the car since quali with the parc fermé, so there will be a lot more tonight.
“But definitely before Austria I expect things to get back to normal.”
Other than the brake issues, reliability does not seem to be too much of an issue. A positive, since a lot of Merceder-powered cars have faced some technical difficulties already. Gasly didn’t want to jinx it however, when asked about it.
“All I can say it’s been perfect so far, so I can’t really ask for more. And yeah I’m very happy with what we got, so… Yeah it’s good.”
Reliability doing the heavy lifting for the results
The same reliability is also the main reason why Alpine is scoring good points. Gasly explains their outright performance is falling back since the start of the year.
“At the minute I think we’re doing, in terms of reliability, everything is perfect since the start of the year. Touch wood it is going to continue like that, and we’re kind of capitalising on the retirement of other cars, but we’ve got to put ourselves on top of that midfield to make sure we we get the most out of it.
“And so far that’s what we’ve been doing the last few weekends so I think the team can be pleased.
“On the flip side I think the gap with the cars ahead has actually grown since the last few weekends and we’ve got to definitely find a way to bring more performance. At the moment we’re just too far away from these guys.”
Gasly want to continue all-season points streak in Austria
Looking forward to the next race in Austria, Gasly hopes to continue the points streak. He is however wary of the other teams, as both Racing Bulls and Audi seem to up their game.
“I mean looking at today I was really not confident with the way I felt in the car, the whole weekend, so I think we should be in a better place [in Austria].
“And yeah I mean looking at the last [weekends] it’s definitely in quali VCARB [Racing Bulls] was impressive, Audi seems to be good since a few weekends, somehow it’s not clicking in a race.
It’s not easy but we just seem to do a slightly better job than them on Sundays, and I think so far we’ve managed to score points on every round.
“I’m hoping to continue that streak in Austria.”
